THE PROTEIN PULSE — DRIVE TIME

Monday Market Open | October 5th, 2026

HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Monday Market Open, October 5th. From The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Organic beef sales grew forty-four point three percent last year to more than one point four billion dollars. The obvious question is: why don't we produce more of it here?

Because organic beef starts with the land. New organic acres generally need thirty-six months without prohibited inputs, and the whole system has to stay compliant. The bigger hurdle is economics. Ranchers can sell conventional cattle today at historically strong prices. Going organic asks them to restrict the land and the cattle, take on cost and risk, and trust the premium years later. Consumers can create a forty-four percent demand signal in one year. Building the land and the cattle to answer it takes years — perhaps decades. If the premium doesn't justify converting the acres, that supply may never be built here at scale.

HOST: Fresh nineties enter the week at four oh five. Eighty-fives three thirty-nine. Fifties eighty-nine cents. South American nineties still indicated around three oh five, free on board the East Coast. Lean trimming imports through September twenty-sixth are eighteen percent above last year. Buyers are pushing meaningful fourth-quarter purchasing into twenty twenty-seven. Cash cattle held around two twenty-six in the South and three forty-five to three fifty dressed in the North, while December live cattle closed at two twenty-one forty-seven, down a dollar seventy. Weekly kill five hundred forty-eight thousand. Year to date still down seven point five percent.

SHAWN: Chicken breast is one nineteen, about twenty-nine percent below a year ago. HPAI is back with fall migration — twenty flocks and about five hundred sixty thousand birds in thirty days — but that is a forward risk, not a tight chicken market today. Pork cutout eighty-six oh six. China is considering lower tariffs on U.S. pork and offal under the thirty-for-thirty framework. Consider is the word. Nothing is implemented yet. December corn broke five dollars, to four ninety-eight, and meal gave back about twenty-nine dollars a ton. Brazil has exhausted its China beef quota. Above-quota shipments now face a sixty-seven percent total duty. Diesel approached six dollars in September. The G-7 is releasing reserves. That may ease the price. It doesn't shorten the miles. Buyers have some leverage in lean beef and feed. Not necessarily in live cattle. Stay disciplined.

HOST: Protein Pulse Drive Time. Shawn Sparks, The Sparks Group.

SHAWN: Stay disciplined.