“Monumental” was the name of the latest issue of The Beef, a daily market column written by Cassandra Fish, a beef industry expert with Consolidated Beef Producers. Her column is read and relied on by thousands of industry professionals in more than thirty countries.
“We’ve never seen the cash fed cattle market rally this much,” Fish said. “We must be about up to about $30 per hundred weight depending on what market you use.”
She recalled the $208 low in mid-April and compared it to where the markets stood at the time she talked to Hays: $232 in Kansas and Texas, and up to $244 in Western Nebraska. “That is an additional $7 to $10 higher, depending on whether you are going off the top or the average of last week. It’s hard to keep track of it all.”
Although the packing industry has been attempting to manage their production schedules since the big slaughter at the end of March, according to Fish, they never seem to find the right balance between what they must harvest and what they managed to purchase the week prior.
“Of course, they have poured contracts and they have formulas, but the negotiated is what is needed to fill in and negotiated trade,” Fish clarified. “We did get boxed beef prices to rally; they have reached an all-time high this week – the highest in history. The rally in the boxed beef prices has not been as robust and powerful as the rally in the cash market. Yes, the basis is very wide and so… what can you say about that?”
She described only one other time in history when the basis was extremely wide, back in 2014. “We’ve never really seen anything quite like this,” she admitted. “I’ve been around a long time, so I can tell you in 2003 when the cattle market topped, calves topped $10 premium, $2 futures, but that was it. This is completely different, whereas we are persisting with a very, very wide basis.”
She mentioned the long stretch of profitability that packers have enjoyed from 2016 until 2024; however, since February 2025, they have been grappling with red ink. Even though they have been trying to regain control by harvesting fewer cattle.
“That has two effects: they need to buy fewer cattle, and they are hoping that boxes are going to rally because of the reduced supply,” she explained. “Of course, steer carcasses are 24 pounds heavier than a year ago. They’re record heavy, so even with the smaller harvest, beef production is down, but not down as much. Whereas you’d have slaughter down about 5 percent, you’d have production down about 3 percent, just rough numbers.”
Unfortunately for packers, all of those things have been inadequate to get them out of the rut they are in.
Fish’s daily market column, The Beef, is emailed out each day for free. Find more information about Fish and her expertise at cassandrafish.com.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
