MARKET NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

June 26, 2025

Livestock

The Agridime case has been settled. Agridime will be forced to pay nearly $103 million in restitution to customers. The court order from the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas also entered default judgments against Agridime's co-founders, Joshua Link of Gilbert, Arizona, and Jed Wood of Fort Worth, Texas. Agridime went into a court-ordered receivership in late 2023 after the SEC accused the company of a $191 million Ponzi scheme. Since last year, the court-appointed receiver had been in talks to sell Agridime and American Grazed Beef to a North Dakota investor group for $15.7 million. However, the deal fell through last month and did not close on the sale. The receiver on May 21st filed an update with the federal court looking to wind down the operations of American Grazed Beef and sell off the assets of Agridime as well.

The average choice retail beef price for May was reported at 881.1 cents per pound, down 2 cents from April. The all fresh beef price dropped 10 cents from April to 840.5 cents per pound. This is the first month to month decline since last November. The average retail pork price was reported at 490.5 cents per pound, unchanged from the previous month. The average composite broiler retail price was 245.9 cents per pound, up a penny from April.

USDA Secretary Brook Rollins helped launch an $8.5 million sterile New World screwworm fly dispersal facility in South Texas at Moore Air Base. She also announced a five-pronged plan to enhance USDA's ability to detect, control, and eliminate the fly. The plan includes: 1) stop the pest from spreading in Mexico and ensure we are full partners in eradication, 2) protect the US border at all costs, 3) maximize our readiness, 4) take the fight to the screwworm, and 5) innovate our way to eradication. The US/Mexican border remains closed for feeder cattle trade.

Total pork stocks in cold storage at the end of May were reported at 451.0 million pounds, down 7% from last year. Pork belly stocks were pegged at 53.0 million pounds, down nearly 19 million pounds from a year ago. Beef stocks at the end of May were quoted at 407.8 million pounds, down 1%, while total chicken stocks increased 1% at 754.4 million pounds.

Grains

On the USDA June Crop Report releaed June 12th, total US winter wheat production was forecast at 1.382 billion bushels (1.349 last year) on a national average yield of 53.7 bushels per acre (51.7 last year) from 25.718 million acres (26.103 last year). The Kansas wheat crop was forecast at 351.9 million bushels, an increase of 44.4 million bushels from a year ago. The Kansas wheat yield was estimated at 51 bushes per acre, up 8 bushels from 2024.

The EPA announced their RFS proposals for 2026 and 2027 on June 13th. They are proposing a record 24.02 billion gallons of biofuels be blended in 2026, with biomass-based diesel seeing more than a 2-billion-gallon jump from 2025 to 5.61 billion gallons and 5.86 billion gallons in 2027. Conventional renewable fuels like corn ethanol were set at 15 billion gallons for both years. The RFS proposal also calls for a 50% reduction in the number of RINS generated for imported renewable fuels and those fuels produced with foreign feedstocks.

China confirmed they granted conditional approval for Burge's merger with Viterra. The deal is now expected to close in July.

As of June 22nd, USDA estimated that 19% of the winter wheat crop was harvested, compared to 38% last year and the 5-year average of 28%. Kansas was 20% cut versus the 5-year average of 31%. Oklahoma was 35% done and Texas was at 70% cut out. Recent heavy rains have stopped the combines in many areas of Oklahoma and Kansas the past couple weeks.

Louis Dreyfus Company said they will reopen the shuttered US grains terminal in Burns Harbor, Indiana, on the southern edge of Lake Michigan in early 2026. The facility was originally built in 1979 by Cargill and has been idle since 2023 when LDC ceased operations there due to difficult market conditions. The Burns Harbor terminal will be able to load up to 90,000 bushels an hour on grain ships as large as 30,000 metric tons in capacity, which is about half the size of ships loaded at larger terminals on the US Gulf Coast and Pacific Northwest.