WORKING RINGSIDE
BIG DEMAND COULD EQUAL BIG OPPORTUNITY by Matt Macfarlane, M3 Marketing Following the short-lived lull of the holidays, we jump into one of my favorite times of year – stock show season – which is soon followed by northwest bull sale season. Both of these winter pastimes are among my favorite because I get out of my neck of the woods and learn more about how my peers across the country are doing, both personally and professionally. As a cattle producer myself who closely follows the work CCA is doing in Sacramento, I am familiar with the issues on the horizon here at home, but when I get to visit with commercial and seedstock producers and other livestock marketing professionals from around the country, I am much more able to predict what the upcoming sale season might look like. As a result, I suspect early winter bull sales will be hot! There will be lots of great cattle offered in production and consignment sales with lots of cattle buyers with a keen eye ready to pay what it takes to get the bulls they need. That said, as cowherd numbers nationwide are still reeling from the unprecedented two years we have seen, the buyers ready to pay top dollar for bulls could start to taper off toward the end of the spring bull sale run. I guess the good news in all of this is that beef demand across the globe is through the roof. People want American beef! As you have flipped through the pages of this magazine (and other agriculture publications) over recent months, headline after headline has read about records being broken for both foreign and domestic red meat sales. Though consumers at the retail level can’t be happy about what they are paying for beef, they still want it and will still pay for it. My wish is that those high prices would actually reach the bank accounts of cattlemen and women who are raising the beef. On the commercial front, the slaughter-ready supply of fat cattle has tightened and packers are actively chasing cattle for the first time in a long time. As a result cattle prices are higher that they were at this time last year and
54 California Cattleman February 2022
the more enlightened minds of our industry project good things to come as we get further into the year. But, if I have learned anything in this business it is to not count your chickens before they hatch. Just because demand is good doesn’t necessarily mean everything is automatically coming up roses. If you recall back to late 2019, we had a log-jam of cattle ready to go to market. Projections in early 2020 were that we just had to get past that wall of cattle and everything would be smooth sailing for the rest of the year. I don’t suppose I have to remind you what happened next. Even optimistic ranchers with the shortest of memories can’t forget how the anticipated fruits of 2020 rapidly spoiled. Back to stock show and sale season...in early January, I had the opportunity to manage the first cattle sale held in the new sale ring at the National Western Stock Show complex in Denver, Colo. The event was outstanding and there was an abundance of excitement for our industry and the opportunities that lie ahead for livestock producers. Though there will always be challenges presented from an ill-informed public, the general consensus across the beef industry and livestock communities is that no matter who is in the White House, life on America’s farms and ranches is still pretty damn great. As I head out to bull sales, primarily in Idaho, Washington and Oregon that is the message I hope to share — We are blessed to do what we do and we are fortunate that we get to do it amongst friends!
