Oh, hey, doing some grilling for the July cookout. You know, nothing fancy, burgers, brats, hot dogs, chicken. Hey, hold on a few, over-the-fence shout out going out. Hey, Michael, what are you grilling up?
“Burgers on the grill for me and my family. There’ll be some hot dogs and, most likely, some grilled chicken breast as well. All the different offerings that come in the meat case.”
Sounds about right for a livestock analyst, Michael McConnell’s role with the Agriculture Department as he keeps his eye on what is available at the meat counter.
“USDA, we’re currently projecting that total red meat and poultry is actually declined by a fraction of a percent, extra by 0.2%.”
Still plenty of supply, though it sounds like particularly for pork and chicken.
“We’re expecting production for those two species to increase, for pork by about 0.7% and for broiler chicken meat by about 1.2%, so we’re expect to see production growth in 2025. However, relatively speaking, that growth of production is fairly modest.”
But just enough of less production that…
“We have been seeing relatively higher prices, both in terms of wholesale prices that we see published by the USDA as well as retail prices seen published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
But it’s not just those overall tightening meet supplies behind prices, it’s demand, especially in the beef section of the retail market. However, if you’ve been watching your sales flyers or online weekly specials from your local-to-you grocery stores and retail outlets, you may have seen some Fourth of July features.
“Features as measured by the Agricultural Marketing Service as primarily they’re looking at retailers that are posting or advertising sales or highlighting certain products that they have, whether they be in coupon circulars or other types of advertisements. Oftentimes those features will include different discount rates or deals like two-for-one deals.”
So regarding deals going into the holiday weekend, Michael says beef has been a featured feature item.
“We are seeing retailers doing more feature activities for beef products, so likely trying to encourage consumers to come into their stores get those supplies for grilling and then getting all the other ingredients, condiments and other accessories needed to have a successful grilling session.”
And if one were to measure the feature rate of beef by stores and their July 4 circulars…
“We’re seeing about an 84% feature rate. Last year, that rate was about 71%.”
Other proteins are also being featured in retail advertisements for the holiday.
“We’re also seeing featuring activity occurred chicken and pork. Both of those are seeing higher levels of activity than we saw last year, but maybe not quite to the same degree that we see as beef.”
So it appears plenty of options, plenty of sales available at the meat counter for your Independence Day cookout. Plenty of hungry mouths waiting for grilling to be done as well.