Trends worth noting

By Miranda Reiman

July 14, 2011

I’m not really a trendy person.

I just can’t help it. I was raised pretty conservatively so the latest fashions were lost on our family, especially when the two-family hand-me-downs were over five years old by the time I was wearing them. I could list a number of other trends I never caught on to, but what’s more important are the ones I do have a pulse on.

They don’t have to do with fashion, music or anything else you’ll find in Vogue. Instead you’ll find them in a publication that’s more relevant to your livelihood: Feed-lot Magazine.

Harvest trends—like grading, percent steers and heifers in the mix, and average carcass weights—are all easily accessible in the CAB Insider” e-newsletter.

Paul pulls these numbers and the corresponding commentary together each week. It started out as a curiosity, wanting to know what goes on each week in packing plants across the U.S. He refined it by adding regional breakouts and benchmarking it against previous years.

As the databank grew, we thought, “I bet we’re not the only curious ones.” After all, grading trends can affect grid premiums (ever think about plant averages?) and prices are impacted by factors like harvest numbers and carcass weights.

The good news is that we don’t keep this information as top-secret intel. For the past year and a half or so, it’s been published in Feed-lot’s e-news. So if you want to be privy to the data, just sign up for the free weekly report.  You’ll get other doses of useful industry info,too.

And,in my opinion, being the best informed beats out being best dressed any day!

May your bottom line be filled with black ink,

Miranda

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