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Enlarge Image/Details May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Enjoy your next steak, because prices from Shanghai to San Francisco are only going up. The highest corn prices since at least the Civil War, based on Chicago Board of Trade data, mean US feedlots are losing money on every animal they sell, discouraging production as rising global incomes increase meat consumption and a declining dollar spurs exports. Cattle may rise 13 percent by the end of the year on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Brazil's Bolsa de Mercadorias e Futuros, futures contracts show. Not since 1996, when corn reached what was then a record $5 a bushel, have cattle been this cheap relative to their primary source of feed.
seventh-worst performer of the 26-member UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index in the past year, a time when soybeans, oil and copper jumped to records.
A 1,250-pound (567-kilogram) steer in the US is worth about 42 times the cost of the corn he consumes over five months to reach slaughter weight, down from almost 12 times in December 2005 and the lowest since June 1996. Prices jumped 65 percent last month, the most since August 2006, and there are signs of reduced supply from US producers.
Ranchers last year cut the number of young females they held by 35 percent to 567 million on Jan. Export Demand As the incentive for producers dwindles, demand for US beef exports will jump 14 percent next year, the USDA said.
dollar, rising global incomes and a relaxation of bans imposed after a case of mad-cow disease in 2003, the USDA said. US beef exports in the first quarter rose 29 percent from a year earlier, data from the USDA show. Increasing beef shipments to Russia, South Korea and other emerging economies will help push up prices in the US, JBS's Batista said. Global demand for beef, pork and chicken may grow as much as 50 percent by 2020 as the population increases and incomes improve, a study by Rural Industries Research and Development Corp.
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