Caught the Monday markets near me this afternoon and noticed lean hog futures took a bit of a hit. Contracts closed steady to down about 15 cents, which isn't huge but worth paying attention to if you're tracking the commodity space. USDA dropped their national base hog price at $91.87 on Monday afternoon, actually up $1.49 from Sunday, so that's a bright spot. What caught my eye though was the pork carcass cutout value jumping 73 cents to $98.50 per cwt. The CME Lean Hog Index came in at $89.44, up 32 cents on Feb 26. Slaughter numbers looked solid too at 482,000 head federally inspected, which is 5,000 above last week. The front contracts tell the story: Apr 26 Hogs dropped $0.150 to $95.575, May 26 slipped $0.100 to $100.025, and Jun 26 fell $0.075 to $109.475. Nothing dramatic, but the direction matters when you're watching these markets near me and tracking commodity trends.