Drought Driving Beef Prices Down

The Northern Plains area has been suffering through a major drought and it’s causing a real challenging situation for cattle producers.

With supplies of forage and feed down significantly, it’s forcing cattle producers to sell off perhaps more than they would usually.

USDA Livestock Analyst Shayle Shagam said that could be a big win for consumers, but maybe less so for producers.

“We do expect with increased supplies of beef to have downward pressure on retail beef prices and we would expect to see in 2017 the CPI for beef to decline around two percent.”

This would be the second consecutive year of a decline in the consumer price index for beef.