Market Morsel: July 2021 Cattle Outlook
Market Morsel
Meat and Livestock Australia have released their July 2021 cattle market projections which include a great new feature showing the industry Eastern Young Cattle Indicator (EYCI) forecasts to the end of the season.
There wasn’t much adjustment to the expected herd numbers to 2023, with some slight tinkering to the figures from the April 2021 projections. The 2021 herd has been revised up by 0.5% to reach 26 million head, from 25.9 million head in the April report. Similarly, the 2022 and 2023 head projections have both increased by 0,3% to reach 27.2 million head in 2022 and 28.0 million head in 2023.
Annual cattle slaughter for 2021 is now expected to come in at 6.3 million head, down 1.6% from MLA’s earlier projections of 6.4 million head. This adjustment down is somewhat unsurprising and we foreshadowed the potential for a lower annual slaughter figure in a recent EP3 article.
A great new feature shows the industry view on the EYCI to December 2021. An average of six industry participants suggest the EYCI will be at 874c/kg cwt by the end of the year. The best case scenario has an EYCI easing to only 968 cents, while some analysts have called it as low as 809 c/kg cwt by the end of December 2021, as a worst case. The EP3 view is a level of 920c/kg cwt by the end of the year.
