US lean hogs hit new low - CME

Apr 24, 2023

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) April and May feeder cattle futures hit fresh contract highs on Tuesday on tight supplies, as analysts said they expected cattle placements to continue to trend down, Reuters reported, citing traders.

Meanwhile, CME May lean hogs hit a contract low of 78.500 cents per pound, before closing down 2.175 cents at 78.825 cents per pound.

Hog futures slipped on weak technicals, traders said, as the cash market continues to remain weak and premiums in the futures markets stay hefty.

"We're seeing that cash market moving lower and lower," said Don Roose, president of Iowa-based US Commodities. "When you add the weakness on the export market, hogs are in a tough spot."

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Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment