Cattle Prices Trending Downwards, Still Better than 2008-09

Cattle prices, unsurprisingly, are expected to continue their downward path in 2017.

University of Missouri Livestock Analyst Scott Brown said a lot of the movement ties to a few years ago.

“If you look back at 2014, we produced 24.3 billion pounds of beef in this country.”

That’s up to 26.5 billion pounds expected this year and it’s expected to grow next year.

Brown said prices in April of 2014 were in the $140-range per hundredweight and that anyone in the cattle industry could have made money, but even at $118 per hundredweight, things have been worse.

“We’re still well above prices that we would have seen in 2008-09 period.”

Those prices were around $92 per hundredweight.