USDA: Meat Consumption On The Way Up

Year-over-year forecasts in meat production continued to increase for the Agriculture Department's annual report.

"When you look at year-to-year and we're talking about increasing overall meat production by three billion pounds, so you might get a little softening on prices to go along with that."

Yet as World Agriculture Outlook Chair Seth Meyer points out,

"Demand has remained pretty good...so the year-over-year price declines aren't very large."

An example of that,

"We do expect a decline of about a little over three bucks for instance on steer price, however, we added a dollar to it this month...now we're talking about 118-dollars and 25-cents per 100-weight just from the strength we've observed and our continued expectation that that strength will continue into the first half of this year."

Likewise, hog prices increased one quarter from the previous month.  And Broiler prices rose two cents from December.  Meyer aid consumer demand over the last two months is behind the recent rise of meat-animal prices.