Australia and New Zealand are major beef producing countries and major beef exporters. Unlike the case in the United States, where less than 10 percent of beef is exported, approximately 60 percent of Australia’'s and 85 percent of New Zealand’'s beef production is exported. Because of their...

It has been argued that access to captive supply cattle improve the economic efficiency of beefpacking facilities. However, this argument has not been subject to hypothesis testing. This workmodels the cost efficiencies associated with captive supplies or cattle we refer to as beingsourced...

Information on typical differences in prices and price risk (as measured by the variances ofprices) across marketing arrangements aids fed cattle producers in making choices aboutmethods to use for selling fed cattle to beef packers. This information is also useful for policydiscussions on...

Worldwide, a segment of consumers can afford to pay substantial price premiums for very high quality agricultural products with attributes those consumers value. At the same time, many U.S. farmers are producing these high-quality products but are not using market mechanisms that allow them to...

Year round grazing systems that utilize stockpiled forage and/or crop residue are oftenpromoted as a way for Northern and Western cow-calf producers to reduce winterfeeding costs and improve overall profitability. This study compared the profitability of aconventional spring calving/summer...

Based on an econometric analysis of the data obtained from a survey of meat plants( ) in Iowa in summer 2007, this paper identifies the factors impacting the meatplants’ voluntary adoption of forward and backward traceability activities. The resultssuggest that the ownership type (corporate...

A 2007 survey of US pork producers indicated that nearly two-thirds of US hogs are produced by less than 200 firms marketing 50,000 or more hogs per year. We estimate that 27 operations marketing at least 500,000 hogs a year sold 43% of US hogs in 2006. The next 164 operations marketing between...

After controlling a variety of feeder cattle characteristics and market and sale conditions, weestimate the price premiums for preconditioning (vaccinations and minimum 30 days weaning)claims with and without third-party certification (TPC) as $6.15/cwt and $3.40/cwt, respectively,in Iowa feeder...