April Cattle on Feed and 2020 Comparisons

Apr 29, 2021

By James Mitchell

Last month Kenny, Josh, and I wrote about the challenges with making year-over-year comparisons to 2020. Comparisons will be based on periods in 2020 when COVID was having major impacts on the beef sector. Last week’s highly anticipated Cattle on Feed report was the example we had in mind when we wrote that article. The Cattle on Feed (COF) report includes estimates for feedlot placements, inventory, and marketings, and each was hard to predict.

feedlot placements

The graph above shows feedlot placements for 2021 (blue line), 2020 (dotted blue line), and the 2015-2019 average (red line). March feedlot placements totaled 1.997 million head, a 28.3 percent increase over March 2020. The cattle placement estimate is a product of two events. First, recall this time last year was when the pandemic started impacting U.S. meat supply chains. This explains why placements are large compared to the previous year. Second, 2021 March placements are likely elevated on delayed placements from February due to Winter Storm Uri. While the March placement figure seems large compared to 2020, it is only 2.4 percent above the 2015-2019 historical average.

April cattle on feed inventory total 11.897 million head, a 5.3 percent increase over April 2020. This estimate reflects some of the same COVID dynamics. Following the April-June disruptions, June-September 2020 feedlot placements averaged 10.7 percent above the 2015-2019 average. Current feedlot inventories continue to reflect high third-quarter placements from 2020.

March fed cattle marketings totaled 2.04 million head, a 1.5 percent increase over 2020. March fed cattle marketings were only slightly above 2020 despite one more slaughter day in March 2021. Again, this estimate reflects the situation experienced last year.

What does this month’s COF report mean for cattle markets? Each estimate in the COF report has implications for current and future beef production. Current feedlot inventories and only slightly higher marketings suggest that we still have large cattle supplies to move through the system. Cattle placements were below average pre-report expectations and are an indicator of future beef production. Once we work through current feedlot supplies, the continued year-over-year decline in calf crop numbers for 2020 and 2021 and high grain prices suggests a lower cattle inventory for the second half of the year. All else equal, a lower cattle inventory for the second half of 2021 will support fed cattle prices.

Source : osu.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”