More sorrow than Angus

Storm hikes beef price

While many are planning a Memorial Day barbeque, meat prices are soaring after a freak Midwestern snowstorm last week.

Cattle futures, which determine prices at the butcher department, extended a surge to a record, and wholesale beef jumped to a 13month high after a weekend blizzard hammered the Midwest. A Kansas livestock group estimated the snowstorm may have killed thousands of animals, signaling tightening meat supplies.

While many analysts were predicting lower beef prices for this summer, retail prices have reversed the slide in the last week on supply concerns.

More than half of US feedlots are located in the region hit by the storm, which dumped more than 12 inches of snow and blanketed an area from the Texas Panhandle to Nebraska, said Lee Reeve, principal at Reeve Cattle Co. in Garden City, Kan., and president-elect of the Kansas Livestock Association.

Losses were the highest among younger animals, and a feedlot with 80,000 head of cattle north of Garden City lost more than 1,000 animals, he said.

“The storm came on so fast, and it was the heaviest snow I’ve ever seen,” said Reeve, who lost about 40 animals from his 43,000-head operation.

Cattle prices had seen big gains even before the storm, surging 40 percent since the middle of October as domestic and global beef demand rose. President Trumpdeclared success last month in gaining greater access to China for US beef suppliers, following meetings with President Xi Jinping. In addition, Brazil’s beef exports may trail previous expectations after a probe into tainted meat in April led to temporary import bans.

But after the USstorm, manycattle strayed, and some died in the western third of Kansas, where as much as 14 inches of snow fell and winds gusted up to 60 miles per hour, according to the state’s livestock group. Road closures and power outages hampered efforts to keep cattle fed and confined, and some owners are still working to locate stray animals.

Kansas had the third-most cattle on feed as of April 1, USDA data showed. Texas and Nebraska tied for first.

Heavier cattle lost as much as 40 pounds; however, animals are gaining weight again as the snow melts, Reeve said. Warm, dry weather forecast into the coming days will prevent feed yards from becoming muddy, halting the potential for more weight loss when moving through the slop, he said.

Damage to grain from the weekend storm is still being assessed, but early estimates suggest wheat losses may exceed 50 million bushels after snow and high winds slammed into four US states, including Kansas, the top grower.