Record U.S. Cattle, Hog Prices Seen on Shrinking Herds, China
By Tony C. Dreibus -
Feb 21, 2011 2:53 PM GMT+0800
Translation by Autumnson Blog
Live cattle for April delivery closed at $1.1515 a pound in Chicago on Feb. 18. Photographer: Diego Giudice/Bloomberg四月付運的活牛2月18日在芝加哥收市每磅1.1515美元。 攝影師：迭戈Giudice/彭博
U.S. livestock prices may reach records in the next two quarters as farmers reduce herds while China imports the most pork since at least 1992 and the largest amount of beef in three years, according to Societe Generale.
美國牲畜價格在未來兩季可能達到新紀錄，因為農民畜群減少而中國自至少1992年以來進口最多豬肉，和三年來最大數額的牛肉，根據法國興業。
Lean-hog futures will climb to a record $1.10 a pound in the second quarter and live cattle prices will be at an all-time high of $1.30 a pound by the third quarter, Societe Generale SA said in a report. The bank correctly forecast higher grain prices in May. Chinese imports of pork will gain 5.7 percent in 2011 and beef purchases will advance 43 percent, U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates show.
瘦生豬期貨將在第二季攀升至創紀錄的每磅1.10美元，和活牛價格將約在第三季創歷史高點每磅1.30美元，法國興業銀行在一份報告中說，銀行曾在五月正確預測較高的糧食價格。中國豬肉進口在2011年將增加百分之5.7，和牛肉採購將前進百分之四十三，美國農業部的估計顯示。
World food prices rose 28 percent in the past year, reaching a record in January, according to the United Nations. Riots partly linked to food inflation ended Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year rule in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade- long rule in Egypt. Finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations last week signaled concern that surging commodity costs are driving inflationary pressures around the world.
世界食物價格在過去的一年上漲百分之28，在一月份達到新紀錄，根據聯合國。與食品通脹關聯的騷亂部分地結束齊納阿比丁本阿里在突尼斯的23年統治，和埃及的胡斯尼穆巴拉克的三十年之久統治。20國集團的財政部長上週暗示關注，上漲的商品成本在推動全球的通脹壓力。
“Meat will start to have an impact on the price index and start to put a pinch on the consumer’s pocketbook,” Jason Britt, president of Central States Commodities Inc., a brokerage in Kansas City, Missouri, said by phone on Feb. 17. Britt correctly forecast a rally in hog prices in 2008.
Live cattle for April delivery closed at $1.1515 a pound in Chicago on Feb. 18. Hogs climbed to 92.275 cents a pound. Hog futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have jumped 31 percent in the past year and live cattle prices climbed 24 percent over the same period.
Hog Herd
The hog-breeding herd in the U.S. totaled 5.778 million head as of Dec. 31, down 1.2 percent from a year earlier, USDA data show. The U.S. cattle herd shrank to 92.582 million head as of Jan. 1, the smallest size in 53 years, as feed costs climbed and beef producers slaughtered more animals to take advantage of higher prices, the USDA said on Jan. 28.
Corn surged 93 percent in the past year, soymeal gained 37 percent and wheat rose 73 percent.
Wholesale pork, up 29 percent in the past year, and beef, 16 percent higher, will have to gain another 50 percent, as will cattle and hog futures, to keep up with increasing grain prices, Robbert Van Batenburg, an analyst at Louis Capital Markets in New York, said by phone on Feb. 17.
Corn prices won’t fall until after the U.S. harvest, as long as it’s a bumper crop,” Art Barnaby, an agriculture economist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, said during an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene this week. Higher grain costs will be reflected in the cost of producing meat, he said.
‘Painful’ Climb
“A lot of recipients of these price increases have faced painful upward momentum, and it’s not going to end,” Van Batenburg said. “This tends to be the last area where you’d see the price increases as a result of the broad-based rally in all commodities.”
Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S. meat processor, said in a Feb. 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it expects chicken operating margins to narrow as grain costs rise $500 million this fiscal year. It will cut costs and raise prices to help its chicken unit “remain profitable” in 2011, it said in the filing.
The price that packers such as Tyson receive for pork has risen about 30 percent in the past year as hog herds have shrunk, according to the USDA.
Tyson and other meat processors have been facing higher feed costs as corn, soybean and wheat prices gained in the past year. Corn and soybean meal represented about 42 percent of Tyson’s cost of raising chicken, which made up 34 percent of its 2010 sales, the company said in the filing.
China’s Demand
Chinese demand also will push up the price of hogs and cattle, and in turn pork and beef, Van Batenburg said. The country, the world’s biggest buyer of U.S. farm goods, imported 156.6 million pounds of U.S. pork in 2010, almost triple its purchases in 2009, U.S. government data show.
In December, China purchased 12 million metric tons of U.S. beef and veal, up 25 percent from the same month a year earlier, the USDA said in a report on Feb. 14. U.S. beef exports last year jumped 32 percent to the most ever, surpassing the old record set in 2003, the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board said this week.
China’s 10.3 percent economic growth last year drove the biggest increase in the nation’s rural incomes in a quarter century, bolstering efforts to spur consumption in the world’s most-populous nation.
In the countryside, per capita net income rose 10.9 percent to 5,919 yuan ($898), a statistics bureau report showed on Jan. 20. The gain was faster than for urban incomes for the first time since 1997. The report also showed accelerating retail sales and industrial production at the end of last year.
“I’m not worried whether they can afford it,” Van Batenburg said. “As a percentage of the whole, the share of the wallet that goes into food has shrunk dramatically. They can afford to go much higher.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Tony C. Dreibus in London at tdreibus@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-21/record-u-s-cattle-hog-prices-seen-on-shrinking-herds-increased-demand.html
世界糧食價格達到危險水平
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