United States: Beef cattle inventories drop to lowest levels in more than half-century

Beef cattle inventories across the United States are at their lowest level in more than six decades, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Rising demand will mean long-term price hikes for consumers. In its biannual cattle report, USDA reported a total of 89.3 million head as of Jan. 1, about 3% lower than the total reported a year ago, and the lowest since 2015. Beef cattle, bred specifically for slaughter and meat sales, declined 3.6%, to 28.9 million head, the lowest total recorded by the agency since 1962. In “Cattle Market Notes Weekly,” a newsletter focused on the cattle industry, University of Kentucky’s Kenny Burdine and James Mitchell, extension livestock economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said the decline came as no surprise. “There was no question that the beef cow herd had gotten smaller,” Burdine and Mitchell said. “It was just a question of how much smaller.” Global financial firm BTIG predicts that consumer ...