More Prime, But Less Choice and Select

David P. Anderson, Professor and Extension Economist, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service One of the interesting trends in 2019 was the retreat in the number of carcasses grading Choice throughout a large portion of the year. The decline in Choice carcasses, combined with lower weights and fewer steers sent to market resulted in some very tight supplies of Choice beef and a wide Choice-Select spread through much of the last half of the…

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Cattle Cycle

Brenda Boetel, Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Wisconsin-River Falls The semi-annual Cattle report was released on January 31, 2020. The report showed what many analysts had already been saying; the total number of cattle and calves in the USA was at 94.4 million head, slightly down from January 2019’s number of 94.8 million head. This number indicates that the industry has entered into the liquidation phase of the cattle cycle. But…

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