The February Feed Outlook report showed the 2023-24 global coarse grain production is reduced. Supply is slightly lower at 442.6 million metric tons. However, reductions in total U.S. coarse grain use outweigh supply losses, lifting ending stocks.

Despite anticipating record-high calf values, the beef industry will start feeling the pinch of tight fed cattle supplies coming in the next year, Kevin Good, vice president of market analysis at CattleFax, told attendees at the 2024 CattleFax Industry Outlook Seminar, held on Feb. 2.

Few times in history has the cattle industry offered more opportunity for profit to conscientious producers than right now. That was the primary message of CattleFax CEO Randy Blach’s executive summary at CattleFax’s Industry Outlook Seminar on Feb. 2. 

Progressive Cattle Editor Tyrell Marchant visits with Ken Odde from Kansas State University about his work on the newly formed Genetic Merit Pricing Task Force and how he thinks genetic data will impact how cattle are bought, sold and raised in the future. Then, Tyrell sits down with Justin Derner from USDA-ARS at the Range Beef Cow Symposium to discuss what producers can do to make sure their pasture is doing everything it can for their cattle, and vice versa.

“The U.S. beef cow herd is the smallest since the 1950s,” says John Hall, a professor and extension beef specialist at the University of Idaho. In light of this, both those buying and selling bulls will feel the effects.

So many of us were still waiting, hoping and assuming that the turn of summer into fall would bring the only thing we could practically fathom: higher market prices for beef cattle.

Michael Uetz, co-founder of the meat-oriented marketing firm Midan Marketing, encouraged Wagyu breeders to understand their consumer target to better market their beef.

In the past decade alone, domestic per-capita consumption of cheese is up 17.1%, and per-capita butter consumption is up 9.0%. 

Idaho farmgate cash receipts and net farm income held near highs in 2023. Price changes varied greatly across commodities, but improved yields kept overall cash receipts elevated.