← Ranch It Up Radio Show & Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
Trade deals markets. What the heck is going on? We bring in Corbett Wall for this one crew. Let's ranch it up. Good day everyone and thanks for riding with us on this all new episode of the ranch it up radio show. I'm Jeff Tigger Earhart. A big thank you goes out to our partners Imogene Ingredients bringing us farm a tan Jorgensen land and cattle home of the motherlode sale. Keller Broken Heart ranch their elite heifer sale coming up December 10th. Livestock market.com equinemarket.com auction time.com Madora Boot and Western wear Moose Creek red Angus Their dispersal sale coming up December 22nd and 23rd. Ranch channel.com RFD TV Superior Livestock Productions and Superior Livestock Auctions. The tri state livestock news top dollar Angus Transova Genetics Westway feed products wrangler and this fine radio station wrecks, crashes, havoc. Limit down all words we've heard the past couple weeks here since President Trump commented on the possibility of importing beef from Argentina because some say the price of beef for the consumer is too high. Well, let's break this one down. This is where I bring in Corbett Wahl. Corbett is a livestock analyst for DV Auction and we find him every day commentating and researching on the feeder flash on nationalbeefwire.com, which I encourage you all to check out, by the way. And we'll provide the direct links to Corbett's feeder flash in the show notes for this episode. Corbett, old buddy, great to have you back on the program. By the way, this is by no means marketing or investment advice that we're gonna go through. Just two old cowpoke sharing their thoughts. So, okay, let's get a better understanding of just what the heck is going on. Let's go back in time and try to make heads and tails of this current cattle market.
- [02:00]
B
Well, it's been well advertised that some folks think that the retail beef price is getting high. And I'm not sure how they're measuring that because if you take it in comparison with almost any product, beef is, is really affordable in comparison. You compare it to potato chips, you compare it to any other kind of food and it's a whole food, wholesome food. And it's just amazing that that they're seeing that. But what they're going back to is they're saying a lot of our, our consumer inflation is, is mostly grocery inflation. And because beef is one of the more expensive items on a normal grocery list, it is, they're, they're dedicating a lot of that inflation to beef and people don't really know how to answer that other than our numbers are tight. But really the price of beef retail or even in a food service market has very little to do with the price of cattle that, you know, they're going to sell that stuff as high as they can sell it. No matter, no matter where we're at. If our prices are lower, our prices are higher. You know, that's why they loved the COVID pandemic, because they could use the excuse that production was low and price at high. Of course, people were buying all the toilet paper and so they were going to buy all the ground beef too. And. And so then people saw stories of empty meat cases and that made them even more aggressive and so they took advantage of it. And we're nowhere near as high on our wholesale beef prices or retail beef prices as we were during that. And cattle weren't all that high at all back then.
- [03:57]
A
It just happens to be, if I'm understanding this right, we're at kind of an anomaly where after Covid this took place, place, our cowherd numbers are the lowest that they've ever been. And it just happens to be where the price of beef and people are paying for protein and nutrition and to know where it's coming from.
- [04:17]
B
Yes, yes. And it's Tigger. It's just gotten bad. You know how it is. Up until we've seen this recent rally which has really been going on for five years, but hot and heavy for two, really up until about three years ago, it didn't pencil out to raise cattle. As a cow calf producer, you could not make sense of it. And we were down to just the guys that were doing it, you know, for the love of the game. They just, you know, that's what they did. And they were cow calf people and they were going to continue to do it, but didn't make any sense at all and hadn't for a long time. Well, they had one good year there in 2014 and that was very short lived.
- [05:01]
A
And we got to add in there too. Sorry to jump in, Corbin, but a lot of those people, when you say for the love of the game, don't have a choice that you're in, you're in that deep, you kind of have to keep going. That's the nature when it comes to production, agriculture, cattle, or if you're farming soybeans, you know, once you get in that deep, you have to keep going because you figured the amount of physical, natural resources, I'm talking just land, it takes to actually maintain that operation. Because the moment that you lose it, you will never get it back and your enterprise is gone and it's done.
- [05:36]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. You could say you could get out, but, you know, people got their kids, you know, that planning on coming in there. But I tell you what, I can't stress enough how much this wildlife preserve for hunting and, you know, just entertainment value of the land has changed things in the last 20 years. You know, you can, you can basically sell that ranch to somebody that's just going to let people hunt on it for more than you can another rancher, and they won't put a cow on it anywhere. And that's one reason that our numbers.
- [06:15]
A
Are so tight when we look at. And here too is I'm going to ask your opinion of who had or has the ear of our president because of statements that he made and that has caused a tremendous uproar in not just the cattle business, but I'm going to just say livestock in general. I mean, there's just been a complete uproar about this, about claims that were made. So that's one question is in your opinion, who's got the ear of the president? And when it comes to the potential of importing Argentina beef, to my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, Argentina doesn't even produce enough beef to feed their own country, let alone start exporting to the United States. So kind of catch us up on that timeline and then we'll, then we'll dive into what's happening as of current.
- [07:12]
B
I tell you what, you and I both know, and your listeners definitely do. This president, our President Trump, he just makes statements all day, every day. And when we haven't had one like that, I don't know, you know, not in my lifetime, we haven't had one that, you know, will just answer questions on his way to the car or his way to the helicopter or whatever. And he is just making statements all the time. Of course, the media just takes off and runs with them. And, you know, he had, in his first term, he had a pretty intense ag advisory group that was well publicized. This term, I have not really seen one, especially when it comes to beef. Now, I know he's, he's friends with some influential people that's in the beef industry. I don't know how often he talks to him. I don't know if it's, if it's that often. I've said it on my program before. President Trump doesn't know about agriculture. He really doesn't but he does know about economics and he does know about supply and demand and things like that. But he, you know, he's not familiar with the things that you and I talk about every day that affects the market price of cattle. And I think he, he jumped out there. Another thing we have to think about. And anybody that knows me knows I'm a big Trump supporter. I'm disgusted with him right now like everybody else is, but he's always two or three moves ahead of everybody else. Always. When he said that, you know, we should ramp up our imports of beef from Argentina, he was doing that because he was in discussions with the Argentine president about maybe we should do some more trading. You know, he's, he's just laying PL platform for that. And, and I don't believe that he felt it was going to make as big a shakeup to our cattle markets as it did, because I don't believe that they are fully aware of, of how sensitive they are, especially our cattle futures. They're just so sensitive. I mean, they're just barely hanging on a cliff, you know, on a puff of wind or anything will make them go down. And we've known here for the past probably six or eight months that we were vulnerable to have this market fall and fall in a big way because it's just propped up there. And, and I think our tight supplies justify a lot of our market, but maybe not all of it, you know, maybe, maybe we were blowed up, you know, with, with moods and excitement and all that kind of thing. A little more than what fundamentals would justify.
- [10:12]
A
I agree. A little, a little more emotion in there than what we normally.
- [10:17]
B
So, so we were, we were flying pretty high anyway, and I think that that was just a jolt. And, you know, like it or not, a lot of the media, a lot of the traders, a lot of the people that, that are involved with the, the investment of the, of the futures and stuff, whenever they said it, they probably blew it up a little bit more. And, and to give us a hunk, just to give a little dig to the cattle producers because they know that most of your production agriculture people are pro Trump.
- [10:54]
A
Corbett, I'm going to cut you off because we need to take a quick break. But hang on here. I want to bring you back on and talk more about this current cattle market crew. You're listening to the Ranch it up radio show, and we'll be back right after this.
- [11:07]
B
It's going to be a tremendous offering, tremendous offering. The best that we've ever put together, no question about it. I think there's five bulls in here right now and they're all bulls that we've collected semen on and used in artificial insemination. And so we thought it would be a good idea for us to go.
- [11:26]
A
Ahead and use these bulls cleanup for.
- [11:28]
B
The cows that we're offering for sale. So they're not just bred to any old bull.
- [11:32]
A
These are also bred to our bulls that we're using. AI that's the Jorgensen landon cattle mother lode sale coming up Saturday, November 22nd at the Ranch Ideal, South Dakota. We run a lot of high milk producing mama cows in our herd. Mitch kenobi of Norfolk dealt with scours in his herd so bad that we sent samples off to south Dakota state and Kansas state. I heard about farmitan. As a producer, I know it's our job to limit our inputs, but when it comes to farmitan, dad and I don't blink an eye. It is a must for every calving season. Adding farm a tan to your livestock's nutrition this fall will rig your new herd of scours in the spring. Go to farmitanusa.com, call Joe Knopp at 340-3323. Keller Broken Heart Ranch, a leader in simmental and simangus genetics invites you to their first annual heart of the herd fall elite female sale. Wednesday, December 10th at the ranch in Mandan, North Dakota. Selling 86 registered bred heifers, eight breed leading donors and 12 elite young cows. Literally the absolute top of the herd. Bid and buy online at DV Auction.com catalogs, videos and sale information available at KBHR Semitol.com and and Ranch Channel.com don't miss this exciting simital and Sim Mangus event. Wednesday, December 10 Keller Broken Heart ranch. Hey crew. We are back with the ranch it up radio show in Corbett wall talking beef imports and markets. So where are we at with this whole thing, Corbett? There has been talk of imports from Brazil and a number of producers and consumers too, by the way are asking why we need to import in the first darn place. We have everything that we need right here is the additional beef. Is it needed to fill the grind?
- [13:16]
B
We've always imported beef from other countries. You know, realistically, you know, as far back as what we're talking, we've always done that. It's in. And yes, you're right, it's mostly for the grind. We do a pretty good job of cleaning up our beef. We eat about 80% of what we produce here. Maybe a little bit more here. Of Late, because we're down on production, but we eat most of it. But everything, you know, we feed our cattle so well that everything we've got is really fat, which makes a higher priced and higher grade, you know, product in our, in our, you know, retail meats, in our hot, you know, higher end cuts and our best primals, so we can have sirloins and, and steaks and, and all that kind of thing. But on our grind to make our hamburger meat, our cows are fat too. And so most of the cows that they grind up and put in there, they, they need. That's why the bulls have been bringing so much lately. You know, the bulls, basically, when you start grinding them up, they don't have any fat in there. And so you have to throw a bull or two and on top of, you know, 20 or 30 cows to try to get that lean percent back to where your housewife thinks she wants it. People think they want really lean ground beef and they want really fat steaks, you know, because they're paying more for the steaks and they want them to taste good. I guess they don't, they don't mind if the ground beef doesn't taste good because they want it to be really lean. But. And that's why we bring that lean in, because we've got countries like Brazil and Argentina and that, that they basically just have cattle running out. And I call them brush fed. You know, they've never had any grain, probably haven't had everything that they wanted to eat, you know, all their lives. And they might be three or four years old and be a steer heifer, but they, they kill them over there. And most of the product is ground up because it'd be too tough to eat if you were trying to eat a ribeye roll out of it. And it wouldn't have enough fat in it to make it taste worth having. And so they get these tubs of lean meat from these other mostly South American countries and they bring it in. And it's really handy to throw in that hopper with, with that other ground beef from our fat cows and our fat trim that we've been adding a lot of value to through importing lean beef is we have a lot of fat trim, put it in there, and it takes that lean grind that we're getting from them and it makes it more palatable and it adds so much value to it.
- [16:20]
A
Your phone has been blowing up for the past couple weeks here, right?
- [16:24]
B
I mean, it's been dinging the entire time. And I don't know when you're putting this out, but my phone has been dinging ever since I've been on the phone with you.
- [16:34]
A
So when you at. When you talk to some different guys out there, what are you telling these guys? And of course, this is not investment advice. This is not marketing advice. This is just cattlemen talking to cattlemen, sharing opinions. What are you saying to these guys? You're saying, hey, this is what happens in the cattle business. It doesn't matter. This is what happens in industry. There's going to be bumps and mountains that we got to climb, and this is just the nature of the beast.
- [17:01]
B
Yeah, well, it's hard to convince somebody that when their calves are suddenly worth $500 a head less than they were two weeks ago.
- [17:09]
A
Exactly. Yeah, I get it.
- [17:11]
B
They're pretty upset. You know, they get one check, and that's a big honk out of it. We've seen our feeder board drop about $35. You know, these limit moves, these limits are so big now, they will just absolutely take your head off. And it's. It's scary out there. But what is. What has changed in our fundamentals? Not one thing. Not one thing at all. And all this talk about Argentina. Argentina has a higher beef consumption per capita than we do, right? By quite a bit. They like their beef over there and. And. And they don't produce a whole lot of it. And what little that they have to sell for export, China takes a big hunk of it. So what they have available is not a whole lot. And even if we took it to the levels that Trump had talked about, like quadrupling it or more of what they were giving us and taking the trade barriers off and the quotas off and all that kind of stuff. If we indeed took every bit of that, it still wouldn't be 1/2 of 1% of our production or spread out over a whole year. It wouldn't grease the pan figure.
- [18:28]
A
As you can imagine, Corbett and I could talk and talk and talk. Hey, I appreciate the time, pard. You can follow Corbett's daily commentary on the feeder flash. Just head to nationalbeefwire.com and click on feeder flash. Follow on Facebook and or on YouTube now crew when we come back, market reports in the latest production sales. You're listening to the ranch it up radio show and keep it parked. Livestock Market.com we hear from the crew at Livestock Market.com every week. Bulls, cows, bread, heifers, open to replacement heifers, cow calf pairs, feeders and stalkers. Horses, pigs, goats, sheep, showstock hay and straw and even alpacas all listed on livestock market.com youm can call it a dispersion if you want. We're calling it a once in a lifetime opportunity. For over five decades the Moose Creek Red Angus cow herd has done what few ever do and that's quietly shape a program that stood the test of time and now is your chance to build that legacy. The Moose Creek Red angus dispersal sale Dec. 22 and 23rd at the ranch His Bee, Saskatchewan, Canada selling a thousand head of elite purebred Red Angus cattle. All sale information available@moosecreekredangus.com and ranch channel.com this isn't just a sale, it's an opportunity. A chance to bring home the kind of cattle that built a legacy. Ranch channel.com I'll give you just a few seconds to head there on your phone. Ranchchannel.com your farm and ranch network on demand bull sales, Western events, product information right at your fingertips on the ultimate cowboy friendly platform. Want to follow up to date markets ranch channel.com no need to dig for information on all these different websites. It's all right there on ranch channel.com y' all are loving it now aren't you? Welcome back everyone to the Ranch it Up radio show. That time in the program we check in with Kirk Don's box Stonex Financial Incorporated Recap in the markets from last week so Kirk, I would imagine you've been pretty busy here the last few weeks.
- [20:37]
C
It was incredibly hectic, specifically the last several days.
- [20:41]
A
Yeah, I would imagine. I would imagine. So let's. Let's recap last week numbers wise. What are we looking at?
- [20:48]
C
What happened as of Friday, October 24th? November feeder futures closed the week at 352.20. That's down $19.50 on the week with the CME feeder index down $9.43 at 367.08. That obviously left the basis versus October futures at a very wide positive $12.98. So $1 million question is cash going to fall apart to futures or futures going to bounce to cash? The answer is yet to be determined. December Live cattle closed the week at 233.92 and a half. That's down $8.07 and a half cents on the week. Cash in the south started at 240 early but dropped to 238 late in the week. The the north traded 238 to 239 early before dropping to 235 late in the week. And of course late in the week. Was the limit down we had Friday? The five area average was not reported due to the government shutdown. The basis against the lowest cash price was a positive $4.20. Choice boxes were up $8.99 at 375.76 though kind of the lone shining star of the whole report. Weekly slaughter was 573,000 head. That's 6,000 head above last week and 52,000 head below the same week last year. Dress weights and yearly production was not reported. To wrap this up, December corn closed at 424. That's up a penny on the week. The big news came out on the weekend with the announcement that China is going to buy significant amounts of soybeans. That is yet to be inked on paper, but the market definitely likes it and that's also supporting corn.
- [22:26]
A
Now I want to pick on feeder cattle just for a little bit. And with feeder cattle earlier in the week limiting down and my question is regarding daily limits. Are those expanded on a day by day basis as needed, or does the CME do they say from this date to this date we will expand what the daily limits are in terms of trading? How does that work?
- [22:51]
C
The expansion of the daily limit is set by the prior day's action. So if yesterday closed at limit the following day we'll have an expanded limit. And it only expands once. So for example, a feeder is an expanded limit is 1375. That remains to be the expanded limit until we don't close down the expanded limit. So if we close down $9 on an expanded limit day, the next day will be back to the normal limit at nine and a quarter.
- [23:21]
A
Do you ranch in the Dakotas or Montana and want to extend your grazing season? Then this podcast is for you. Hey hey. I'm Shea Warner and I host the Casual Cattle Conversations podcast. In one of my recent episodes, Luke Ressler shares how they've extended their grazing season along with tips and considerations for other ranchers. Here's a small portion of our conversation.
- [23:43]
D
So I planted a 10 species cover crop mix on it and I grazed cows on that. Oh it was in October when we moved them out there and I didn't bring them home till January 1 last year. And granted we had a pretty open winter last winter and I was supplementing at the end. I was supplementing some hay to them, but it was kind of like every other day I'd bring them some hay. They were mostly interested in going out and picking and grazing and so having them out there till that January 1st or into January is just awesome. You know, for us, the less hay, less having to start up a tractor in the wintertime, things gelling up, trying to get things warmed up and going. I don't want to be out there in a tractor either. It's just a lot easier to run out with a four wheeler, check on them and then get back home and go work on some other things.
- [24:39]
A
Ready to tune into the full conversation? Check out the casual Cattle Conversations podcast on your favorite podcast player as soon as you're done listening to the Ranch it up radio show. Heading to the Ranch Channel Sales calendar wasm Red Angus Their Elite Red Angus Female sale going on as we speak. It's an online only sale. Saturday, November 8 JYJ Red Angus Their annual production sale in Alabama Bulls and heifers Friday, November 14th Jorgensen Landon cattle and Wink Charlay present the Legends of the Fall Fall Bull Sale in Arcadia, Florida Selling the smart bulls in the Long Aged Charlie Bulls. And also Friday, November 14th the DLCC Ranch in Piers, Minnesota presents the Hallmark Legacy Female Sale featuring South Devon Pound Maker and Navigator Genetics. For more details, head to ranch channel.com and now that's going to wrap it up for today. A big thanks goes out to our crew. Corbett Wall with DV Auction and the National Beef Wire and Shea Warner with casual cattle conversations. Plus Kirk Donsbach with Stonex Financial Incorporated. A big shout out to our partners Imogene Ingredients bringing us Farmatan Jorgensen Land and Cattle Home of the Motherlode Sale Keller Broken Heart Ranch Their Elite Female sale coming up December 10th livestock market.com equinemarket.com auction time.com Medora Boot and Western Wear Moose Creek Red Angus Their dispersion is coming up December 22nd and 23rd. Ranchchannel.com RFD TV the Tri State Livestock News Top Dollar Angus Trans Over Genetics Westway Feed Products Wrangler in this fine radio station and crew. So glad you all came with us one more time as we ranch it up. Be sure to like and follow us on Facebook at Ranch It Up Show. Our email is ranch upshow gmail.com and don't forget you can call or text 24 7. That phone number is 707-RANCH20. That's 707-726-2420 spread the good word and join us again next week where it's always Tigger and Beck approved. Stay ranchy and ranch it up.