Ep. 11 Long-term Impacts of the 2022 Drought on the Cattle Market

[00:01] Introduction: Welcome to Relevant Risk from the Fryar Price Risk Management Center of Excellence presenting conversations and Analysis about Risk and Risk Management for food and agriculture, supply chain decision makers from farmers to consumers and everyone in between. This is Relevant Risk.

[00:19] John Anderson: Hello, this is John Anderson, director of the Fryar Center for Price Risk Management at the University of Arkansas. I am here today with a new Relevant Risk podcast, and my guest for today’s podcast is a frequent flier on the program, James Mitchell. James, how you doing?

[00:35] James Mitchell: Good, good. Yeah, we’ve done a couple of these, so hopefully we’re starting to get it figured out.

[00:39] John Anderson: Yeah, yeah. One of these days we’ll know what we’re doing. So what I want to talk about today, James, is the drought. And there’s been a lot of talk in ag markets about the 2022 drought. I would say in Arkansas, the drought has moderated some. We’ve had some rain around the state. Things are looking in most parts of the state I think better than they have in the last month or two. But the drought remains a pretty big feature in ag markets nationally. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, some of the major cattle-producing parts of the country are still very much affected by the drought. And what I wanted to specifically talk to you about today is some of those maybe longer-run issues that the drought raises for the cattle market. And I think the cattle market is in a little bit different position related to drought effects and a lot of other crops. And I guess what I’m getting at there is if you think about the row crop world, we have a drought, the crops reduce their market impacts, they really affect things for that marketing year and then the world moves on. Things get back to normal, other markets react and it’s, it’s, it’s an event that is really focused in a particular marketing year. But with cattle, there are some long run considerations. A drought sets in motion decisions, market factors that really play out over a longer period of time. So I want to talk about that with you today. So maybe to kind of kick that off, let’s just talk about kind of what the immediate effects of that drought have been like. Where are we with respect to the drought? And what have been the responses of the cattle market to that drought? And we’ll pick up from there and talk about what the long run implications of those things are.

[02:35] James Mitchell: Yeah, yeah. Good overall summary there. So talking about maybe the immediate kind of short term impacts that we’re seeing, you know, in many ways, things have to get worse before they can get better. And so obviously when you have a drought, our pastures can’t support number of cows that we maybe would in a normal year. So we cull some older cows from our herd, droughts stays there even longer, we have to dig a little bit deeper into our cowherd and maybe sell off some of those younger, more productive cows. Drought lingers even more and things don’t get any better. We get into a probably worst-case scenario where we have to sell out completely, and in the near term, short term, those cows, everyone making the same decisions, they all hit the market at the same point in time. That can in many ways kind of not tank but reduce cull cattle prices.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: And if you look at the Southern Plains, for example, where you mentioned drought is the heaviest, Texas, Oklahoma, parts of Kansas, kind of right in the smack dab middle of this. In July, we saw those cull cattle prices just decline at a very, very sharp rate. And that was because a lot of producers were culling their cows at the same time when that drought was really, really the heaviest.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: Now, a nuance to that is unlike maybe feeder cattle markets, cull cow markets are much more regional. So we didn’t necessarily see that same sharp decline in cull cow prices in other parts of the country, like the southeast: Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky maybe. In Arkansas, we we did see some of the same market impacts that we did in Oklahoma and Texas. So we were culling very, very heavily in July. We had a lot of cows hit the market at the same time in Arkansas. And we did see, you know, in a week’s time about a 15% decline in cull cow prices in the middle of July. That market has since picked up, as you said, we’ve gotten some rain.

John Anderson: Mhm.

James Mitchell: And as we’ll talk about later, probably a little too much, a little too late in terms of timeliness and quantity of rain. But the market response has been kind of improving because we’ve kind of hit that point in the year where we were going to cull very, very heavily because of this drought. And it remains to be seen what that tells us about the fall, when we would normally cull a lot of cows. Did we just cull everything in July, so there’s not going to be anything to cull this fall? If that is the scenario, then we could see seasonally strong cull cow prices in a time when we would see them seasonally decline. Kind of hard to predict that now, but-

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: -we’re getting close to that time period, you know, on the feeder cattle side, though the drought that we’re seeing right now does have some more long-run implications- and so maybe that’s a good segway to get into that- but the immediate market impacts have really been on our cow markets.

[05:34] John Anderson: Yeah, let’s talk about that a little bit. I’ve got a question about those cow market impacts. The couple of possibilities for the reason for that price impact of the cull cow, the big runs of cull cows-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -the big sales of cull cows. Is that primarily an issue of just in the short run, the supply chain is overwhelmed with the number of cows? Or is that an issue of the consumer market is overwhelmed by the additional supply of lean trim? Which of those is the dominant factor do you think?

[06:06] James Mitchell: So I would see it was just an over run of cows, not a demand side thing at all.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: You know, anecdotally, talking with colleagues at Oklahoma State, they were saying like, you know, they have never seen that many cows to run through OKC-

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: –in a long, long time.

[06:23] John Anderson: More than the buyers have orders for-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -more than the processing plants can comfortably push through-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -in a short period of time-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -that kind of thing.

[06:29] James Mitchell: Well, so to that point, cow slaughter itself doesn’t happen at the same plants that fed cattle slaughter does.

John Anderson: Right, and that’s-

James Mitchell: Those are- and cow slaughter is much more regional, just like those markets are much more regional. So, because cow slaughter is very regional, if you’ve got all these cows hitting very localized markets: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, for example, those cow plants do get kind of overrun with supplies. And so there’s really- bid them down as much as you can-

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: -because we’re full.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: And so it’s very much been a supply side reason for those pressure on prices. But to the other point of that, we’ve seen elevated cow slaughter the whole year. And yes, we’ve had drought for the better part of two years in some part of the country. But that doesn’t explain the cow slaughter that we’ve seen all year being as high as it is.

[07:29] John Anderson: So I want to pick up on that because I know you keep up with those cow slaughter numbers. And, you know, we look at those those those weekly cow slaughter numbers, we look at the evolution of cow slaughter throughout the year, to try to get some sense of what’s going on with the aggregate herd size. Are we, are we liquidating? Are we expanding? You know, what are- what what what management decisions are producers making? So what do you think those cow slaughter numbers for 2022 year to date tell us about what’s going on with the cow herd.

[08:03] James Mitchell: Yeah, so I’ll step just to back up to the point you just made, I think what explains the elevated cow slaughter through all the entire year is drought and a strong pull on the demand side. I think there’s been strong beef demand, strong ground beef demand, which has kept cull cow prices strong up until this point. So I think that is part of this story. To your other part on what does this signal about the overall herd and kind of where we are as an industry, cumulatively through this point in time in 2022 in terms of slaughter, we’ve slaughtered about as many cows as we’ve slaughtered in the better part of 30 years-

John Anderson: Okay.

James Mitchell: -and so that-

[08:46] John Anderson: So we’ve been-

[08:47] James Mitchell: -is a strong signal of liquidation.

[08:49] John Anderson: -we’ve been liquidating at a pretty rapid pace, is what you’re saying.

[08:52] James Mitchell: Yeah. And so the number that everyone thinks then about is that January cattle inventory report, which tries to- that gives us an estimate of the U.S. cow herd. And so what we try and do as economists is we look at what’s cow slaughter doing this whole year, what’s heifer slaughtered during this whole year? Can we make a guess about what we will see in terms of percentages, declines or increases in cow numbers when that January report hits. And, you know just walking through the different scenarios last year, the 20- January 2022 cow herd came in about 2.4% lower than the 2020 herd number. I don’t see how we’re not in a scenario where we’re going to see a 3% plus decline in the January 2023 cow herd-

John Anderson: Okay, that’s a-

James Mitchell: -I think we’ve, we’ve done so much slaughter up until this point that no matter what happens, the next part of 2022 in terms of slaughter, we’ve already gotten ourselves to a point where we’re going to see pretty strong liquidation.

[09:58] John Anderson: So even if we have pulled ahead from this fall’s numbers-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

and process some early because of the drought or whatever, we’re still looking at a fairly significant-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -drop in the cow herd.

[10:09] James Mitchell: Yeah, and I don’t want to bore people with the math of that, but at least when I’m looking at the numbers, even the most conservative, “let’s back off slaughter almost completely for the remainder of 2022,” even in that scenario, we’ve already dug ourselves- we’ve already slaughtered so many cows that we’re going to see a pretty strong decline-

John Anderson: Okay.

James Mitchell: -when that January report comes out.

[10:30] John Anderson: So significant decline in the January 1 inventory-

James Mitchell: Yeah, yes.

John Anderson: numbers is pretty much baked in-

James Mitchell: It’s-

John Anderson: -based on what we’ve seen so far.

[10:35] James Mitchell: -it’s almost but guaranteed at this point. Now, it’s to this point, it’s just, okay, well, let’s now try and figure out how, how big of a decline, not if there is one.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: Mhm.

[10:45] John Anderson: And I want to talk about the implications of that in just a second. Before we get to that, one other point that I want to talk about relative to the drought and the drought response is placements of cattle into feedlots. So not, not the liquidation of breeding stock, but how we, how we- the flow of cattle- feeder cattle- off of farms and into feedlots, and how- how the drought has affected that. Any thoughts on that?

[11:10] James Mitchell: Yeah, so it’s funny you mentioned that. I was- I was trading emails with Josh Maples- who’s been on this podcast before- at Mississippi State, and in last week before that August cattle and feed report came out Josh and I were writing back and forth about what we thought we’d see in terms of placements. Looking at some of the auction data, I was kind of thinking maybe we’d see some stronger placements in July of some heavier feeder cattle that were on summer pasture that maybe we were just trying to sell lower than normal- report came out last Friday and no, it was those lighter weight cattle that really drove up placements. And so I tell that quick story to say, that placement number has been probably one of the hardest numbers all year to try and predict, from an economist perspective, because drought just does a lot of different things. And when it- when it hits, where it heads, it can just kind of make that placement number, just kind of be really, really hard to predict because it- it changes everyone’s decisions about marketing-

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: -cattle, right? Like we’ve got- without drought, we’ve got these pretty, somewhat well-defined times of year when certain types of cattle go to market. Right? So August, September, we see a good run of yearling cattle coming off summer pasture, that late fall we see all our spring-born, fall-weaned calves come to market, you know, March, we see some of those stocker cattle. So, in a normal year, we kind of can see and predict, you know, when we should see some cattle placed on feed. With a drought, it just kind of throws all those rule of thumb out the window. And it’s really anyone’s guess. What this drought has really done is, we’ve been placing a lot of cattle on feed earlier than normal.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: And just larger numbers in magnitude as a whole. Some cattle that maybe would have been put on pasture this summer were placed on feed earlier this spring. Maybe some calves that we would be marketing this fall were early weaning and placing on feed now. So, those types of things are really tricky to predict and it’s- it’s really been kind of anyone’s guess as to what’s going on with those numbers.

[13:16] John Anderson: Yeah. But I guess the- the bottom line, the disruption in the production system sort of scrambles the decisions that people make about where cattle are going to go. But if they’re not going on grass, which is nonexistent in the drought, they’re ending up in a feedlot.

[13:32] James Mitchell: Yep, exactly. Exactly.

[13:34] John Anderson: And so, let’s shift now and talk about some of the long run implications of some of these factors we’ve talked about, and we’ve talked- we just finished talking about basically pulling stock or feeder animals into the feedlot, as opposed to grazing systems that- are, that are challenged by the drought. We’ve talked about the liquidation of breeding stock some, some, some pull there from the demand side, but also some push from not having the availability of forage for those cattle and adding up to a significant liquidation. Here’s where I think the cattle market gets much trickier than- than most markets in in in response to a drought situation. This kind of supply side disruption. We’re talking about a couple of factors here that will really work their way through the market over a couple of years, right?

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: So, what are the one-year, two-year implications of what we’re seeing this year for this cattle market? What do producers need to be thinking about in terms of the market situation that they’re going to face over the next couple of years because of this drought?

[14:42] James Mitchell: Yeah, I would just say backing up a little bit for the layman, maybe not as familiar with the cattle production cycle- the reason we’re thinking one, two years out is because of the biology-

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: -involved in cattle production. For a crop, you get a drought, it hits that year’s production. For cattle, there’s a lot of biology there. That means that what’s happening today, we will really see those impacts in a year to two years.

[15:10] John Anderson: Right.

[15:11] James Mitchell: And in the same way that what- and I phrase that because the question that we get a lot of times from the farm press or popular press is: we’re seeing a drought today, what does that mean for consumers today?

[15:24] John Anderson: Exactly, that’s a great point.

[15:25] James Mitchell: And you have to back up and say, no, no, no, no. What this drought’s doing today really matters for consumers in two years.

[15:32] John Anderson: Yes.

[15:33] James Mitchell: What consumers are seeing today has to do with what happened one or two years ago for our cattle producers.

John Anderson: Yep.

James Mitchell: And so the things that we need to think about then for one to two years from now is, we first talked about cow slaughter, well, that means fewer cows that are going to give us calves. So that- fewer cows means we’re going to have smaller calf crops for the next couple of years. Sending more cattle to market, we’re also keeping back fewer heifers right now. So that means fewer potential cattle to put into the herd to raise calves. So, you can kind of see how the biology of a cow produces a calf, which becomes beef. Everything that’s happening right now suggests that we’re going to continue one to two years moving into a much tighter supply situation for feeder cattle, which is what most of our producers here in, at least in Arkansas, are familiar with and are in the business of selling. And so because we’ve had fewer cows this year, we’re going to have tighter calves next year, which are going to be fewer feeder cattle in two years.

[16:42] John Anderson: Right. So you’re making a great point there. And these production lags that are so long in the beef industry are part of why it’s a difficult industry to sort of game out-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -and I think also in terms of risk, alright this is a Relevant Risk podcast, in terms of assessing the market impacts, that’s what makes that- that assessment difficult, that, the being whipsawed from one supply sys- one kind of supply situation to another. That’s a complex process in the cattle industry-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: in a way that I think is, is, is more complex than in a lot of other industries.

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: There’s kind of, what I’m hearing and what you’re saying, there’s kind of a good news, bad news story in there, I think. I mean, in terms of- good news might not be the right way to put that. But the good news for somebody who survives the drought and keeps their production as- as intact as possible, is that they’re probably looking at a healthy market a year or two down the road when this, this constrained supply situation really starts to affect the market. The bad news side of that situation is you’re looking at an industry that has become quite a bit smaller. So in terms of the market share of beef relative to competing meats, for instance-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -that’s a- there’s a- the- a portion of that supply is not there to hit that market-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: Something else is going to be there. So, could you comment on that a little bit?

[18:14] James Mitchell: Yeah. I guess to your point about being sensitive about how you phrase it, maybe not good news, maybe just, drought is kind of pushing us into a more favorable supply scenario, which just by definition means higher prices.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: Who benefits from those higher prices is, are those at least immediately that were able to get through the drought, whether that be because they live somewhere where there wasn’t any drought, or they were just, had good, sound management and were able to manage themselves through the drought. Yes, it does mean higher-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -prices. The part that gets tricky, and why I don’t like talking about drought and higher prices- because, we got here because that means that someone else didn’t make it through the drought.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: Through either selling some or, in some instances, all of their, their cows. And then the question becomes, okay, when we get to higher prices, are those people that left the industry going to come back? And it’s hard to tell-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -for some, no. I mean, that’s those are operations that are lost. Then, and so when those prices do elevate, the general response is to produce more, who is going to produce more? Is it going to be just some other operations that scale up even more? Or is it going to be people that come back to the industry once prices improve and once drought conditions improve? That’s a- yeah-

[19:52] John Anderson: And I know you’ve talked to a lot of producers, and I like the way you’re summarizing the situation, because I think you really are making the- the point very well that the supply situation results, because people don’t survive-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -either, either they, they reduce the size of their operations significantly or they got out entirely.

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: And either way, they’re missing out on-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: On this positive situation that we’re describing. So, I know you talk to a lot of producers and interact with a lot of a lot of cattle producers in the state and also around the region. What sense do you get from talking to them about these- this, this liquidation that has gone on? Will they come back? Are there, is there generational turnover going on that these people are, you know, they’re at the later stages in their life anyway, and they’re saying, you know what, I’m just going to get out and, and retire-

James Mitchell: Yeah-

John Anderson: -and get a boat or put in a garden or do something else, or what’s your sense of, of what the bounce back might look like?

[20:52] James Mitchell: Great point. I think you just look at the long-run trends and, and kind of who these people are and where they live, I mean, it’s an aging producer.

John Anderson: Mhm.

James Mitchell: And so for a lot of them, this is, they’re kind of exiting the industry. Do they come back? Probably not. Do they have a generational turnover? Well, we also know the trend in that is fewer people returning to rural areas and to take up the business. So, I think it just means a smaller number of operations potentially- in parts of the country, that, that is a very regional thing to think about, too.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: What happens in Arkansas looks very, very different from what happens in Oregon, for example. But, but there’s a lot of people, I think that yeah, are, are exiting the industry that maybe won’t come back. And that is difficult- a difficult thing to talk about, but something that I’ve been hearing a lot of too, that might be more of a philosophical discussion that they’re having, but I think it does have strong foundations in economics is- thinking about long term implications. Here is a lot of producers thinking back to the last couple of droughts that we’ve had and-

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: -what looks different and what looks the same- most recent would be 2011, 2012. And the result of that was really, really strong cattle prices in 2014 and then a drop out of that market in late- in August, September 2015.

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: And something that a lot of producers have said to me is- they don’t really see how it’s sustainable to need a drought to get to a more profitable situation.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: Like that, to them, that doesn’t seem very healthy that we need a drought to have higher cattle prices and improve on farm profitability. And, the way you see that in economics is, you know, we increase price one or two ways: either we need a shift in the supply curve or a shift in the demand curve. One of those will get us higher prices. The drought would be a shift in the supply curve. And so what they’re saying is there’s got to be other ways to increase prices other than needing a once every ten year large-scale drought event. And the only way to do that is with an increase in demand.

[23:10] John Anderson: Can we develop demand in such-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -a way that that demand –

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -growth keeps supply and demand in balance-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -in a way that, that sustains profitability in the sector?

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: That’s, that’s my summary of what you’re-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -saying there. Is that about right?

[23:23] James Mitchell: Yeah. And on the demand side, I think, you know, we’ve had record exports this year-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -domestic [inaudible] has held up well. But I just think as an industry coming out of this drought, there are market impacts. But just thinking strategically about growing beef demand as a way to ensure higher cattle prices-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -as opposed to waiting around for the next drought to come, which looking at the science, you know, there are questions about the frequency and severity of these droughts potentially increasing over time. So finding ways, A- to mitigate the impacts of this drought, and B- thinking of strategic ways to grow beef demand as another alternative to increasing cattle prices.

[24:05] John Anderson: Yeah. Well, let me amplify what you’re saying a little bit there. I think also, if you think in terms of the community aspects-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -you know, aside from that, the kind of macro farm level difficulties that, that, that these kind of events create, you know, having rural communities that depend on these businesses as kind of their economic base-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -relying on a major supply shock to contract that base to give you a good market is really not a healthy situation for those, for those communities- for their- for their- for their economic situation.

[24:38] James Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, thinking in Arkansas, like there’s a lot of people that are indirectly involved in cattle production-

John Anderson: Absolutely.

James Mitchell: -who’s businesses and like, you know, for example, your local feed store-

[24:49] John Anderson: Yup.

[24:50] James Mitchell: -all of those employees, all of their your farmhands. There’s a lot of people that depend on this industry and a lot of our rural communities in Arkansas depend on this industry- it is a huge contributor to the ag economy in Arkansas-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -and I think to your point, yeah, we shouldn’t need droughts to, to kick us into a more favorable supply and demand situation.

[25:11] John Anderson: Yeah and this is, you know, this is analogous to the situation that if you, you think about the situation that crop markets were in back in the 1980s and 90s prior to the 96 farm bill, I would say just kind of roughly speaking- we had similar conversations around these crop markets. You know, we had very persistent supply overhangs, large ending stocks that kept markets depressed routinely. And we would be shocked out of that periodically by a short crop. Either here or in another major producing country. And that was sort of the feeling about that is, you know, the only time we get a good market is when we get a big enough drought somewhere to reduce this supply overhang. And I think that markets- those markets have largely kind of grown out of that with, with population growth and increasing demand for the products, and also a lot of work in developing demand sources for those products-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -that’s not as persistent a feature of those markets as it was a generation ago, and that’s been a very positive thing, I think, for the ag sector generally. So, I think you’re making a good point about the livestock sector. Can we, for, for beef in particular, can we get to that, you know, healthy, routine, consistent development of the demand side to support this market- to support a stable market with-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -at least relatively stable profitability-

James Mitchell: Yeah.

John Anderson: -is what we’re talking about.

[26:31] James Mitchell: And I think we’re getting there. I hear a lot of smart people in this industry having those conversations among themselves and in larger groups. So, I think the indu- this isn’t just you and I coming up with some novel idea. I think this is something the cattle industry is very much working on. And I think some things from the pandemic that we’ve learned is there might have been some fundamental shifts in beef consumption trends and beef demand. And I think the industry is recognizing some of that and starting to design products and supply chains that can facilitate that growth in demand and in change in beef consumption. So I think we’re getting there.

[27:10] John Anderson: And so to end on, on a positive note, I would say if you look at the demand side of the market over the last 18 months, it seems like it’s been a fairly positive demand picture for the beef industry-

James Mitchell: Mhm.

John Anderson: -has it, has it not? Is that, is that a fair statement?

[27:23] James Mitchell: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things to untangle there. We’ve- we’re in a kind of a two year period of just real macroeconomic concern and uncertainty, and those do have implications for beef demand. But I think despite all of that, domestic beef demand has held up quite well. I think one of the real bright spots for the industry is just the growth we’ve seen in some of our export markets-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -both recovery post-pandemic, but also just real growth, and- in those markets, and you know, it’s not just off all tongues and livers, it’s sending lots of high valued product to all over- all over the world really.

John Anderson: Right.

James Mitchell: And that is a sign of strong beef demand. And so continu-

[28:06] John Anderson: And adding value back to U.S. cattle.

[28:08] James Mitchell: -Yeah, absolutely.

John Anderson: Yep.

James Mitchell: So I think we’re getting there. We’ve kind of gone full circle I feel like, talking with drought, finishing all-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -the way and going back to beef demand should, should tell some of you that beef demand is, is a huge part of, of the industry and what the industry does-

John Anderson: Yeah.

James Mitchell: -moving forward.

[28:24] John Anderson: Well, it’s certainly a complicated system overall, both the production side and the demand side. But that’s what makes it interesting to work on-

James Mitchell: Mhm, absolutely.

John Anderson: -in my opinion. James, I always appreciate you coming in to help us kind of unpack what’s going on in this industry that is very important to our state and to the country, and a lot to be keeping our eye on as we move forward and hopefully come out of this drought fairly quickly.

[28:45] James Mitchell: Yeah, I just would say I’m- for those that are wondering, quite bullish on prices this fall. So, we’re, we’re getting ready to get into a pretty important time period for our cattle producers. And we just talked about how, you know, those supply pushes or, or whatever in terms of supplies and price. But we are getting into a period where we’re going to see some, some more favorable calf prices this fall.

[29:08] John Anderson: Very good. We’ll be looking for that. Again, this is John Anderson with James Mitchell. Thank you for joining us for Relevant Risk, podcast of the Fryar Center for Price Risk Management at the University of Arkansas.

[29:21] Conclusion: Thanks for listening to the Relevant Risk Podcast, a production of the Fryar Price Risk Management Center of Excellence in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness within the University of Arkansas System. The Fryar Price Risk Management Center of Excellence carries out teaching activities through the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and research and Extension Activities through the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Visit fryar-risk-center.uada.edu for more information. Thanks for listening.