Consumers pay the bills in the beef industry, according to a beef and livestock specialist from Iowa.
Darrell Busby, manager of Tri-Country Steer Carcass Futurity, says when consumers are willing to pay more for high quality beef, packers are willing to pay more for higher quality cattle, and so most feed lots will source higher quality cattle.
"In the United States, 74 per cent of the cattle marketed today are on some kind of grid system that rewards feed lots for producing high quality cattle," Busby says.
Busby says the system rewards each segment of the industry for producing higher quality beef, but thinks in order to see these rewards at the cow-calf level, there needs to be more communication.
"I think some of the times, the feedlot runs out, they buy the cattle, they're really good cattle and the cow-calf operator wants to know, well how'd my cattle do? Well, they did pretty good, but they want to buy them next year," he says. "That's usually a pretty good sign that you're producing high quality cattle when you have repeat customers."
Source : PortageOnline