The Good and the Bad
Despite all of the negativity going around these days, there are some bright areas in the livestock industry, mainly in the beef cattle markets. I wish we could say the same about other markets, such as the wool market, but it is still flat.
Around the local auction markets, canner cows and bulls have crept up a bit. At the packinghouses, fat cattle have also come up a little. What this tells us is hamburger is still the most popular beef product out there, with consumers and restaurant patrons driving the prices upward.
As one drives through town, we have been seeing long lines of cars at the drive-thru fast food restaurants. As they start opening up for inside dining, they will help push up ground beef sales. It is no secret ground beef accounts for a large percentage of beef processed and consumed today. To make this happen, we need extra fat and lean beef. The extra fat is coming from the backlog of large fat cattle processed today.
According to CattleFax, the slaughter cow market averaged $62.36 per hundredweight versus $57.78 in April and the beef cow slaughter in 2020 is 1.2 million head, up 1.3 percent. While the bull slaughter is down 8.7 percent, the cow carcass weights are averaging 652 pounds, up 0.6 percent.
This makes the good news better. There are bigger cow and fat cattle carcasses, more beef cattle processed at the packinghouses, beef exports are rising and although prices are rising, consumers are still buying beef.
And ground beef is at the forefront. It is grilling season and everyone likes hamburgers and cheeseburgers, as well as hamburger steak, meatloaf and hot dishes. We’re thankful for hamburger.
Just as the COVID-19 seems to be easing up a little and we’re all looking for some normalcy, things got ugly again when a black man was killed while being arrested and three other policemen watched. It was a terrible act.
For society, a bomb went off as it opened old wounds, not only for people of color, but many others as well. Many protested across America peacefully and some other groups in larger cities used this time as an excuse to riot, set fires and loot businesses. Now some politicians are using all of this to benefit themselves and their causes.
For us in Wyoming and the surrounding region, we don’t understand what and why these horrible acts happen. We realize it may happen less here, but that still doesn’t make violating someone’s civil rights, right. We also don’t understand why recently in Chicago, 18 people were murdered in a 24-hour period. Why does this happen? Now, they want to defund the police departments in these cities, so then if one needs assistance from a policeman, they would get a social worker instead, I guess.
Why are those who riot allowed to do so and create more victims whose properties were burnt down or looted. Their civil rights were also abused. Why destroy their own city or was it their city? Were they brought in to create destruction and cause unrest during an election year?
A divided America is a weak America, those who want to harm us will have an easier time doing so. Remember, we are all Americans and all have rights, but those rights don’t allow us to break the laws.
