Arkansas feed prices

This page lists every feedstuff USDA quotes for the Arkansas trade region, cheapest first, with each price's FOB-vs-delivered basis. Compare an ingredient's cost per unit of protein or energy on the leaderboard before reading across regions: the cheapest board price is not the cheapest fed price.

What Arkansas prices. USDA's feedstuffs board carries 6 feedstuffs for this region: Rice hulls, Soybean hulls, Rice bran, Cottonseed meal, Soybean meal, Feather meal. Every quote here is FOB at the plant, so the freight to a mill or a farm sits outside the number and has to be added before comparing against a delivered market. Across the board the range runs from Rice hulls at the low end to Feather meal at the high end, which is a spread in dollars per ton and not a ranking by feeding value.

Why a regional price differs from the national one. A feed ingredient's price at any point is the plant price where it was made plus the cost of getting it to where it is used, so the gap between two regions is mostly a freight story. Regions with processing capacity inside them tend to quote below the national reference because the ton has not travelled; regions that consume more than they produce quote above it by roughly the haul. That difference is the basis, and it widens when trucks tighten, when fuel runs up, or when a local demand source outbids the freight-out market for the same tons. It moves for reasons that have nothing to do with the ingredient itself, which is why a regional quote can rise in a week when the national board is flat.