Weather Could Strike FEAR into the Cattle Market

The best gift a farmer or producer can have is moisture. Many producers around my area are beginning to spread fertilizer and get their planters ready for a new crop season but without moisture this fertilizer will not melt and soak in and our top soils will be too dry for crops to come up. This puts great fear into many of the markets because of the drought we had in 2012 where in the Midwest we went many days without any moisture which caused yields to drop drastically in crops and cause the price to go up which caused the cattle market down because of high feed costs.

Drought Monitor

The implementation of a new farm bill helps with natural disasters such as drought which will provide much needed relief for producers should the weather not cooperate. The cattle on feed report  was down 1 percent last Friday which continues a downward trend for the past 19 months. In return, this has caused beef prices to hit an all time high but one thing that could effect these record prices is the weather. Recent drought in California(large in milk production) threatened that milk prices would go over $5 a gallon if moisture or relief was given soon which shows what the weather can do to a market. If the weather doesn't provide producers with adequate moisture grass will dry up and hay supplies will go down fast because fall pasture will never have a chance to grow back. Overall, to keep the cattle market steady the weather needs to cooperate otherwise we will see some large downward swings which could really hurt producers.