U.S. beef cattle inventory lowest since 1962
U.S. beef herd down due to input prices and drought.
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Ryan McGeeney (https://www.farmprogress.com/author/ryan-mcgeeney)
February 27, 2023
3 Min Read
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In its bi-annual cattle report, USDA reported a total of 89.3 million head as of Jan. 1, 2023 — 3% lower than the total reported a year ago, and the lowest since 2015. Beef cattle — those bred specifically for slaughter and meat sales — declined 3.6%, to 28.9 million head, the lowest total recorded by the agency since 1962.ERDINHASDEMIR/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
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Beef cattle inventories across the United States are at their lowest point in more than six decades, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In its biannual cattle report, USDA reported a total of 89.3 million head as of Jan. 1, 2023 — 3% lower than the total reported a year ago, and the lowest since 2015. Beef cattle — those bred specifically for slaughter and meat sales — declined 3.6%, to 28.9 million head, the lowest total recorded by the agency since 1962.
In “Cattle Market Notes Weekly,” a newsletter focused on the cattle industry, University of Kentucky’s Kenny Burdine and James Mitchell, extension livestock economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, wrote this week that the decline came as no surprise.
“There was no question that the beef cow herd had gotten smaller,” Burdine and Mitchell said. It was “just a question of how much smaller.”
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STEEP DECLINE — In its bi-annual cattle report, USDA reported a total of 89.3 million head as of Jan. 1, 2023 — 3 percent lower than the total reported a year ago, and the lowest since 2015. Beef cattle — those bred specifically for slaughter and meat sales — declined 3.6 percent, to 28.9 million head, the lowest total recorded by the agency since 1962. (USDA) (https://www.farmprogress.com/cattle-news/u-s-beef-cattle-inventory-lowest-since-1962)
Challenges
For many producers throughout the country, 2022 had offered a perfect storm of economic and weather-related challenges: input costs such as diesel and fertilizer doubling or even tripling, and a hot, dry summer that only increased reliance on groundwater in the absence of rainfall. For cattle producers in particular, drought conditions offered no replenishment of dwindling forage supplies, leaving many producers to cull deeper into their herds than they might have otherwise preferred. Elevated beef cull prices contributed to an 11% increase in beef cow slaughter, according to USDA.
As Mitchell recently pointed out (https://bit.ly/Ark-beef-market), however, the reduced supply combined with steady demand from the U.S. consumer at least meant greater profitability for those producers with stock to sell.
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Biological lag
“There is a pretty substantial biological lag in the beef supply chain,” he said. “What consumers experience at the grocery store is a product of what cattle producers were going through a year or two ago. It takes about two years for a new calf to become the steak on your dinner plate.
“To the extent that we’ve got historically low cattle stocks today, that will lead to tighter cattle production, which means potentially higher beef prices,” Mitchell said. “From the perspective of cattle producers, this also means higher prices. The recent report from USDA just reinforces a bullish outlook on cattle prices for the next couple of years.”
The downward trend in cattle production does not appear likely to reverse itself in 2023. According to USDA’s cattle-on-feed data, the number of cows on feed as of Jan. 1 fell 4% from 2022 numbers, to about 14.2 million, marking the first year-over-year decline in beef production in eight years, Burdine and Mitchell wrote.
Source: University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture
Ireland Looking To Kill 200,000 Cows To Fight Climate Change; Are US Herds Next?
In the latest effort to reduce emissions from agriculture, Ireland said it may kill 200,000 cows. Meanwhile, climate activists have American farms and ranches in the crosshairs.
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Kevin Killough (https://cowboystatedaily.com/author/kevin-killough/)
June 02, 20235 min read
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Climate activists are coming for livestock producers and farmers.
European governments have been targeting the agriculture industry for several years. The Telegraph reports (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/02/irelands-mooted-cow-massacre-warning-to-net-zero-britain/) that Ireland’s government may need to reduce that country’s cattle herds by 200,000 cows over the next three years to meet climate targets.
In an effort to reduce nitrogen pollution, Reuters reported the European Union last month approved a $1.6 billion (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-okays-161-bln-dutch-govt-buy-out-farmers-reduce-nitrogen-2023-05-02/) Dutch plan to buy out livestock farmers.
Front And Center
Now the Biden administration is targeting American agriculture.
Special President Envoy For Climate John Kerry recently warned at a climate summit for the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the human race’s need to produce food to survive creates 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gasses.
“We can’t get to net-zero. We don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry said.
Microsoft Billionaire Bill Gates also is obsessing about cattle emissions, providing financial support to companies that are developing seaweed supplements (https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/03/10/to-reduce-methane-in-cow-burps-bill-gates-launching-startup-to-feed-cows-seaweed/) and gas masks (https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/03/23/bill-gates-gives-4-8-million-to-develop-gas-masks-for-cows-to-fight-climate-change/) for cows.
It’s ‘Groupthink’
Kacy Atkinson, an agricultural advocate (https://kacyatkinson.com/) who raises cattle in Albany County, told Cowboy State Daily that this conversation on emissions from the industry isn’t considering the beneficial impacts of cattle to the environment and the climate.
“Groupthink happens a lot around the climate change conversation. We get tunnel visioned on one piece of it without considering the full ramifications of what's going to happen if we remove cattle from the land,” Atkinson said.
She said cattle contribute to drought resistance, soil health and wildfire reduction. Just before cattle were introduced to North America and the industry began raising them, Atkinson said there were thousands of buffalo roaming the plains.
Cows and buffalo are both ruminants, which is a type of animal that brings back food from its stomach and chews it again. These animals’ digestive systems produce methane emissions. Today’s cattle population is similar in numbers to that of the buffalo herds.
“So, the methane emissions from ruminant animals aren’t anything new,” Atkinson said.
Trapping Carbon
Cattle also benefit plant life, Atkinson said.
“You need ruminant animals to forage grasses, because they’re the only things that can,” she explained.
Pigs, for example, are monogastric and can’t break down high fiber content in grasses. Cow’s digestive system can break the grasses down, and then they fertilize the ground.
So, through proper cattle grazing management, Atkinson said the cattle she’s raising are helping plants to grow.
In the atmosphere, the methane they burp out — most of it is released through the mouth of the animal — breaks down in 10 to 15 years into carbon dioxide and water. The plants that cattle help to grow use that carbon dioxide. The carbon then gets put back into the soil through the grasses’ roots.
“So the cattle are essential in helping to keep that carbon trapped in the ground,” Atkinson said.
Atkinson said cattle have other benefits to the climate that are being ignored in the focus on just their emissions. Whenever soil cracks or fissures, it releases carbon into the air.
The animals walking upon the soil compacts it and helps keep the carbon trapped in the soil.
She said one study done by the University of Florida found that between 10% and 30% of the world’s carbon storage is found under the feet of U.S. cattle.
Increasing Food Insecurity
Brett Moline, spokesperson for the Wyoming Farm Bureau, told Cowboy State Daily that the regulations that would likely flow from ideas like Kerry’s would only make farming and ranching more expensive.
Ultimately, those expenses would get passed down to the consumer.
“It’s going to make food expensive, and we still have a large part of the population that is food-insecure,” Moline said.
Of course, people aren’t going to stop eating. If farms in North America and Europe shut down, food production will move to countries with lax environmental regulations. The end result, Moline said, is less environmentally friendly farming producing the world’s food supply.
As far as the climate impacts, Moline said those are getting blown out of proportion where everything is blamed on climate change, such as the drought in the past couple years.
“Two years ago, it was drier than my jokes,” he said. “Now we’re getting wet again. Climate ebbs and flows.”
Other Benefits
Atkinson said that one in eight people in the U.S. is considered food insecure, which means they don’t have a sufficient source of nutrition.
By removing cattle, Atkinson said, they’re just furthering that problem by eliminating a valuable protein source from the American diet.
There also are a lot of food byproducts that cows consume as feed. This includes the leftover pulp from orange juice production, the hulls from almonds, and the peels of potatoes from making french fries.
“All that would just end up in a landfill,” Atkinson said.
Cattle are also not just a source of food. Products including some laundry detergents, nail polish remover, soaps, lotions, footballs, and pharmaceuticals are made from animal byproducts.
“It would be a pretty significant undertaking to replace all of the things that we get from them,” Atkinson said.
Contact Kevin Killough at Kevin@CowboyStateDaily.com