Check our advice monitor at ProFarmer.com for updates to our marketing plan.
The White House can’t blame beef for a March surge in inflation. Beef prices saw a monthly decline in March but remain up sharply from a year ago, consumer price index data showed on Friday. Beef and veal prices, the broadest category, were down 0.6% last month, while ground beef declined 1.2%. Over the 12 months ending in March, however, beef and veal prices were up 12.1% and ground beef up 11%.
Consumer demand for beef has proven resilient in the face of rising prices, an element that has allowed live cattle futures to return to record levels this week. Packer margins, however, have turned back into the red, which could eventually threaten the rally. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for lower beef prices since last fall. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins reposted an X social media post by White House adviser Kush Desai hailing the declines in ground beef and prescription drug prices.
A fall in food prices, however, was overshadowed by a surge in the headline consumer price index, which jumped 0.9% in March after a 0.3% February increase. That took the year-over-year rate to 3.3% from 2.4% in February.
Unsurprisingly, energy was the primary driver, posting a 10.9% monthly rise in March, led by a 21.2% jump for gasoline as a result of soaring crude prices in the wake of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. The surge in gasoline prices was the largest on record, with data going back to 1967. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, was more subdued, up 2.6% year over year in March, compared with 2.5% in February and a touch slower than the 2.7% average analyst forecast. Economists will be watching for evidence that surging energy prices are seeping into the headline figure in coming months. It’s likely to show up soon in airfares and other transportation costs.
What it means for the Fed: “What is critical…is the go-forward interpretation of what shocked higher oil, natural gas, other industrial commodities, including gases such as helium etc., means for the global economy in the period ahead, and particularly for the relevant corporate and consumer uses of these resources,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income and head of the global allocation investment team at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
“The immense disruption of trade and global supply conditions, and the uncertainty of how these issues will resolve themselves over the coming days, weeks, and months will be what truly influences market-pricing and the policy reaction function to forward inflation reports from here,” he wrote. “And, what also becomes intensely relevant for markets is how growth across regions and sectors is influenced by the Iranian conflict.
- “Our sense is that the next move by the Fed will almost unequivocally be to lower interest rates from here, from a somewhat restrictive place currently,” he said. “But since we’re witnessing such a large shock today, with an uncertain set of reverberations around it, waiting for a longer period of time to make those cuts could be in the offing.”
Record low consumer sentiment: Meanwhile, the Iran conflict and its economic aftershocks sent consumer sentiment sinking last month, according to the University of Michigan’s closely followed gauge. The index dropped to a record low of 47.6 in April, down from 53.3 in March. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had expected sentiment to inch lower in April, to a reading of 52. Year-ahead inflation expectations surged from 3.8% in March to 4.8% this month, the largest one-month increase since April 2025. The current reading exceeds those seen in 2024 and remains well above the 2.3-3.0% range seen in the two years pre-pandemic. Long-run inflation expectations ticked up from 3.2% last month to 3.4% this month, the highest reading since November 2025.
Little relief for HRW areas: World Weather Inc. on Friday said northwestern U.S. hard red winter wheat areas are unlikely to get much precipitation over the next ten days. This includes southwestern Nebraska, northwestern and west-central Kansas and eastern Colorado, areas that the forecaster said it sees as the most adversely affected by extreme temperatures and dryness in recent months. Yield potentials should be down in these areas, World Weather said.
U.S. wheat areas in Oklahoma, central and eastern Kansas and a few counties in southwestern Kansas will likely get some welcome rain for crop improvements over the next 10 days, World Weather said, while rainy weather from Texas to the Great Lakes region will prevail through much of the next 10 days to 2 weeks keeping fieldwork to a minimum in some areas. U.S. spring planting progress will be greatest and most aggressive from the Ohio River Valley through parts of the Delta to the Tennessee River Basin and portions of the southeastern states during the next two weeks.
Brazil ethanol boost: Brazil, the world’s second-largest ethanol producer, is considering raising the amount of ethanol in gasoline, a move that would aid consumers facing higher fuel prices while also boosting demand for sugar-cane mills struggling with a biofuel supply glut, Bloomberg reported.
Mines and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira said Wednesday that Brazil wants to raise its mandatory blend of ethanol into gasoline to 32% in the first half of 2026. The current requirement stands at 30%. The shift to 32% would mark a much faster time frame than most analysts anticipated, as the war in Iran adds pressure to fossil fuel prices, the report said.
- “It’s a move that’s happening quickly as it takes into consideration the rise in global prices of crude oil and refined products,” Martinho Ono, president of ethanol trader SCA Brasil, told Bloomberg.
India relaxes rice export curbs: A government notification on Friday said India will allow exports of basmati and non-basmati rice to some European countries without an otherwise mandatory certificate of inspection by its export inspection agency for six months, Reuters reported. The requirement of a certificate is limited to EU member states, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, the notification said, adding that all other European countries are exempt for six months.
European jet-fuel shortage looms: The Financial Times reported that European airports face “systemic” shortages of jet fuel if the Strait of Hormuz is not fully reopened within three weeks. ACI Europe, which represents EU airports, said jet fuel reserves were running low, while “the impact of military activity on demand” was further straining supplies, the report said. The FT said a letter from the organization warned EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas of “increasing concerns of the airport industry over the availability of jet fuel as well as the need for proactive EU monitoring and action.”
- “If the passage through the Strait of Hormuz does not resume in any significant and stable way within the next three weeks, systemic jet fuel shortage is set to become a reality for the EU,” the letter said.
AI alarm bells: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gathered Wall Street leaders for an urgent meeting on concerns that the latest artificial intelligence model from Anthropic PBC will usher in an era of greater cyber risk, Bloomberg reported. Bessent and Powell assembled the group at Treasury headquarters in Washington to ensure banks were aware of possible future risks raised by Anthropic’s Mythos and potential similar models and are taking precautions to protect their systems, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The meeting, arranged on short notice, signals that regulators consider the possibility of a new breed of cyber attacks as one of the biggest risks facing the financial industry, the report said. Bloomberg noted that all the banks summoned to the meeting are classified as systemically important by top regulators, meaning their stability is a priority for the global financial system.
Don’t miss these must-reads: