The location of future U.S. milk production growth will be closely linked to large-scale regional cheese processing capacity, according to Ben Laine, dairy analyst with RaboResearch. Laine discussed a recent RaboResearch paper, “Milk cow migration spurred by processing capacity,” in an interview during World Dairy Expo.

Byproduct values for cattle have increased dramatically in the past few months. Hide and offal values, which have generally declined in recent years, bottomed during the early stages of the pandemic in 2020 to the lowest levels since 2009.

I’ve often pondered on how agriculture is paired with not only feeding everyone, but how agriculture has also teamed up with other products and services that have gone mainstream.

The roller coaster ride that was 2020 is over. A bit dazed (but undefeated), forage exporters can reflect upon a difficult year full of challenges that nonetheless yielded a new record for international sales.

Despite the challenges facing the industry at the beginning of the third quarter, the beef industry has processed more fed cattle in third-quarter 2020 than the previous year.

Packers continue to make gains on processing of fed cattle post-COVID-19 plant disruptions in the second quarter.

Packers continue to make gains on the processing of fed cattle. Based on USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) data for actual and estimated slaughter of steers and heifers in August, the pace of fed cattle slaughtered appears to have risen above year-ago levels for the first time since March (see Figure 1).

In July, the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released the mid-year Cattle report, which provided a snapshot of U.S. cattle inventory as well as a glimpse into cow-calf producers’ intentions for retaining heifers.