It felt good to tear down the 2003 calendar and pin up a fresh one. New calendars, not yet filled with memos and reminder notes about deadlines and meetings, are full of optimism. They give the impression that the future is yours to decide.
As you leaf through a fresh new calendar, there are no droughts, no grasshoppers, no diseases. The only notices are about holidays and the moon’s phases. The pictures are all beautiful.
But then reality sets in. The new calendar simply measures the continuation of your life. All that went before gets carried into the new year.
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The year 2003 carried a lot of baggage that will be dragged into 2004. The heaviest burden is bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The discovery of a case in the United States has again shaken markets and given cattle producers another heaping helping of uncertainty.
Will the Canada-U.S. border open to live Canadian cattle this spring as was expected? If it does, how many cattle will the Americans need now that 10 percent of their production formerly exported will have to find a domestic home?
How long will importers of American beef keep their borders closed?
Will Americans keep eating beef? Restaurants report Americans are showing no reluctance to eat burgers and steaks, but most of the other questions are unanswerable at this early stage.
But perhaps a change of calendar does make a difference.
After dropping for the six final trading days of 2003, for a cumulative loss of 20 percent, live cattle futures markets rebounded on the first and second trading days of the new year. That doesn’t necessarily signal a sustained recovery, but might mean that a market low has been set.
In other positive trading news at the start of 2004, wheat futures closed sharply higher after China announced that a wheat buying group would visit the U.S.
Wheat’s strength spilled over into corn and soybean markets. Soybean prices had already been helped by speculation that the new BSE case might prompt the Americans to ban the feeding of ruminant protein to any livestock, a move that would boost demand for soy meal protein.
Let’s hope the positive trends of the first few days of 2004 continues for the rest of the year.
