The FIE Input Cost Index fell for the third straight week. But it’s still sitting in High Pressure territory, where it’s been since we started the index.
This week, the September corn and wheat futures contracts expired, so the index rolled to December pricing, a routine seasonal shift that pushed the raw numbers higher on paper. The driver is harvest delays across the Corn Belt, where Iowa’s corn and soybean harvest is running well behind normal pace.
Boxed beef fell $3.91 to $374.26 per hundredweight, its second drop in three weeks. But cattle markets showed their first real signs of stabilizing since the slide that started in June, with steer prices up $3 per hundredweight. The U.S. beef herd remains near a 60-year low at 28 million head, and retail ground beef is up nearly 8% year over year.
