DTN Early Word Opening Livestock

 
Cattle: Steady-$2 HR Futures: 25-50 HR Live Equiv: $138.76 + .67*
Hogs: Steady-$2 LR Futures: 50-100 HR Lean Equiv: $ 82.11 - .37**
* based on formula estimating live cattle equivalent of gross packer revenue
** based on formula estimating lean hog equivalent of gross packer revenue

GENERAL COMMENTS:

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	BULL SIDE		BEAR SIDE
1)	The beef carcass value continues to appreciate, motivating packers to own large live cattle inventories.	1)	The U.S. is refusing to resume trade negotiations with China until Beijing comes up with a concrete proposal to address Washington's complaints about forced technology transfers and other economic issues, said officials on both sides of the Pacific.
2)	The United States has lifted restrictions on some imports of fresh and frozen pork from Poland, specifically from facilities that are in contiguous areas free of the highly contagious hog disease African swine fever, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday.	2)	A scorching drought in Canada's heartland that made grass worthless for feed is causing farmers to consider culling as much as 20% of the national cattle herd before winter in a "heartbreaking" nationwide effort.
3)	China reported a new African swine fever outbreak in the province of Guizhou on Thursday. The new case, the first confirmed in the southwestern province, was found on a small farm with 10 pigs in Biji city, Guizhou, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement published on its website.	3)	The pork carcass value continues to soften in the face of mounting market hog supplies.
4)	Japan found African swine fever in packed pork sausage being carried into the country by a foreigner coming from Beijing early this month, the nation's agriculture ministry said on Tuesday.	4)	The latest monthly trade data has been tabulated -- for August -- and U.S. beef trade continued its impressive performance with monthly exports up 9% and year-to-date export totals up 14.2% year over year.

OTHER MARKET SENSITIVE NEWS

CATTLE:(Cargill) -- Cargill has developed an industry-first robotic cattle driver aimed at improving animal welfare and employee safety. The robots are designed into move cattle from pens to the harvest area, reducing stress to the animals by minimizing their proximity to human activity. Employees operate the robots from a catwalk located above the pens, reducing safety risks by keeping those who work in the cattle yard portion of processing plants at a greater distance from the 1300-pound animals.

"The robotic cattle driver developed by Cargill is a major innovation in the handling and welfare of farm animals," said Temple Grandin, professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University. "This device will lead to huge strides in employee safety while moving large animals and reduce the stress on cattle across the country."

Cargill Protein spent two years developing the prototype, with significant input from animal welfare experts including Grandin, beef plant employees and engineers from equipment supplier Flock Free. Using waving automated arms, blowers and audio recordings to move cattle in a desired direction, the robots can operate in rain, snow or mud, with no delay in daily operations. Testing was conducted at Cargill's Wyalusing, Penn., and Schuyler, Neb., beef processing facilities to determine a design and operational attributes of the robot that would effectively improve animal welfare and employee safety before being implemented at the company's U.S. and Canadian beef plants.

"The average bovine weighs almost three quarters of a ton, and our plant processes several thousand head of cattle daily," said Sammy Renteria, general manager of the Cargill beef plant in Schuyler, Neb. "This innovation provides a much safer workplace for our employees and allows them to develop new technology expertise as they manage and operate the robot."

The robotic cattle drivers are currently being implemented at Cargill Protein beef plants in the U.S. and Canada. They are manufactured by the New Jersey-based company Flock Free. Cargill believes the robotic cattle driver has multiple applications for improving animal handling and worker safety across livestock and poultry supply chains and is working toward making them available for use throughout the industry.

HOGS:(WNAX)-- National Pork Producers Council officials while pleased with the recent USMCA trade agreement like Canada and Mexico want to see the U.S. lift steel and aluminum tariffs on those countries. NPPC's Dave Warner says that will help make the USMCA work better. He says that would mainly help with U.S. pork trade to Mexico.

He says the overall remake of NAFTA through the new USMCA kept all the previous ag benefits to the U.S. and pork roughly intact.

Warner says building off USMCA, America's trade negotiators can now move ahead with a bilateral deal with Japan and possibly even the Philippines which is a huge potential market for American pork.

John Harrington can be reached at harringtonsfotm@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter @feelofthemarket

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