A growing number of beef cattle producers in the US are using limited information to determine whether or not it would be economical for them to grow naturally produced cattle. The objective was to discover the attributes that marketing companies prefer for the naturally produced cattle they...

Under the December 2006 Baseline, 25 of the 65 crop farms are considered in good liquidity condition (less than a 25 percent chance of negative ending cash in 2011). Five crop farms have between a 25 percent and a 50 percent likelihood of negative ending cash. The remaining 35 crop farms have...

Beef tenderness is critical in consumer satisfaction with beef steak products. Current fed cattle valuation systems do not differentiate carcasses based upon tenderness variation. However, considerable research indicates consumers are willing to pay more for tender relative to tough beef steak....

Cattle feeding enterprises operate amid variability originating in prices and production. This research explicitly models yield risks related to cattle feeding by relating the mean and variance of yield performance factors to observable conditioning variables. The results demonstrate that pen...

The Michigan State University (MSU) Dairy Team conducted an industry survey with the objectives of identifying and rating industry priorities. After holding discussion groups across the state, two questionnaires were developed and sent to 2,237 dairy farm owners and operators and 480 allied...

Presented to USDA Economists Group, Washington DC, May 27, 2009

The agricultural economics literature, both academic and trade, has discussed the assumed presence of cycles in livestock markets such as cattle and hogs for a very long time. Since Jarvis (1974), there has been considerable discussion over how these cycles impact optimal economic decision...

This paper tries to justify the observation of different return patterns in the upstream and downstream sectors of US beef production. It builds a dynamic rational expectation model separating the cow-calf and feeding sector with the former sector being the residual claimer. The model shows that...