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The cattle markets continue to move forward as we say “goodbye” to March and “hello” to April! Cash fed cattle took a nice little jump last week with cattle in the North $3 higher than last week, at $190 to $191, and $4 higher than last week’s dressed, at $302. The South also enjoyed a nice bump in the market […]

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Some pretty big news, in my opinion, came out early last week at the National Farmers Union Annual Convention in Arizona. While speaking at the convention, Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack made the announcement finalizing a rule mandating that all meat products sold with the “Product of USA” label must be from animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the […]

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Spring bull sale season is in full swing, and with that, time is flying by so fast that I often have to remind myself what day of the week it is! This time of the year affords me a lot of windshield-time to think as I travel up and down the highways of my territory. Satellite radio has been a […]

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We all know the old saying that if March “comes in like a lion,” it will “go out like a lamb,” or vice versa. Well, around many areas of Reporter Country, it came in like a lion. I drove many icy roads the first few days of March and encountered poor visibility due to heavy snow conditions. We have had […]

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I was anxiously waiting for the monthly Cattle On Feed report to be released by USDA last Friday. Pre-report estimates had placements during January to be about 12 percent less than last year. It was a touch surprising that they only came in at 7 percent below the same month in 2023. Following the release of the report, I read […]

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The USDA released the 2022 Census of Agriculture data a little over a week ago. Here are a few things I took out of the report. As one would expect, the total number of farms, acreage, and operators declined as compared to the 2017 Census. There were 2,042,220 farms and ranches in 2017, compared to 1,900,487 in 2022, down 6.9 […]

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  IT’S TIME TO UNITE… You have heard me talk about the Producer Profitability Initiative, spearheaded by the Livestock Marketing Association (LMA), with Joe Goggins, who is on the board of directors for LMA, taking the lead.  For those of you that may be reading about this for the first time, to make a long story short, LMA wants to […]

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USDA released the January 1, 2024, Cattle Inventory Report on January 31. Here is a breakdown of the report: All Cattle and Calves January 1: 87.2 million head, 2 percent below the 88.8 million head last year. Pre-report estimates had an average guess of 98.2 percent with a range of 97.9-98.7 percent of last year. The report showed 98 percent, […]

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The 2024 spring sale season is fully underway around Reporter Country, and my-oh-my, are we off to a fantastic start! The needle has also been pointing higher for feeder cattle and weigh-up cows and bulls since the first of the year. I guess the big thing I want to point out this week is that we all can’t get complacent […]

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A few months ago, I caught wind that the USDA was working on a remote grading system that would allow smaller processors to have access to federal grading. This was about the time my wife and I were opening our new restaurant. There are getting to be more ranchers around the U.S. selling their beef to restaurants, grocery stores, and […]


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