News Update
September 13, 2013
Beef Industry’s Path Charted
Prosperity for any industry depends on consumer demand, a Western Kentucky University animal scientist points out. Of course, that includes the beef industry or cattle community.
Nevil Speer, in a new white paper, “Consumers, Business and Breeding Systems: Charting the Beef Industry’s Path,” says the implications are clear.
“All business decisions on the ranch, as everywhere along the beef supply chain, should be made with an eye on consumer demand for beef,” he says.
Following a 2011 work that explored why crossbreeding is not more widely used, the latest paper details shifting market signals and a sometimes-volatile relationship between consumer demand and industry output since 1960. It suggests what emerging dynamics mean for an integrated business environment and outlook for the beef industry’s value chain.
Those expectations and fluctuations have always been tied to the consumer, the animal scientist points out.
“Traditional thinking leads commodity businesses to constantly face the same question: ‘What’s the market going to do?’” Speers says. “That paradigm implies a price-taker mentality and fails to truly connect to the signals consumers send that establish those prices.”
In the face of increased demand for higher quality beef, tight supplies and tighter margins, being a “price taker” risks being left behind.
Within a new mindset, success means delivering “quality, consistency, efficiency and volume across a whole realm of products and attributes,” Speer says. That requires moving from a “commodity-sorting system to growing adoption of more specialized production.”
There are 6 million fewer beef cows in the U.S. compared to 17 years ago, and the feeder cattle supply at 35.6 million head represents less than 2.5 times current feedyard capacity.
For more information, please view the full release here.
Request a Sale Day Kit Today
When planning a cattle sale this fall, producers can plan to stock their sale offices with educational resources and Angus information. The American Angus Association offers a free, sale day kit that showcases the Angus advantage through guide books, brochures and many other resources. Request a kit today to ensure it arrives on the ranch in time for sale day.
“By investing in Angus genetics, your customers are also gaining access to the industry’s most valuable database, recordkeeping programs and the latest genomic technology,” says Jena Thompson, Association assistant director of public relations. “We hope the materials communicate that message to potential buyers.”
The sale day kit comes in three types — one tailored specifically toward female sales, another for bull sales and the third for bull and female sales. Each kit includes various literature and posters in quantities of ten to 25.
Inside the kit, specific information can be found on Association programs and services, such as AngusSource® Genetic, AAA Login, Beef Improvement Records, Certified Angus Beef LLC, the Angus Foundation and many others. Buyer guides, beef improvement information and full-color posters are a few of the items available.
For more information, please view the full release here.
SMV Emblem Celebrates 50 Years of Safety
A simple, inexpensive emblem likely responsible for saving countless numbers of lives nationally is now 50 years old.
University of Missouri Extension rural safety and health specialist Karen Funkenbusch said the slow-moving vehicle emblem, adopted 50 years ago by the National Safety Council, is one of the most recognized emblems in the country.
With National Farm Safety and Health Week set for Sept. 15-21 and harvest season approaching, it is a good time to remember the emblem’s importance in reminding motorists to “share the road” with farmers, Funkenbusch said.
Acceptance of the slow-moving vehicle emblem was slow in itself. The idea began as early as the 1950s when Ohio State’s Department of Agriculture of Engineering conducted a 10-year study of tractor fatalities. Research by Ken Harkness funded by the Automotive Safety Foundation focused on slow-moving vehicle accidents and showed that 65% of motor vehicle accidents involving SMVs were rear-end collisions.
By 1962, Harkness supervised the design and testing of the sign. Tests of human recognition of different shapes and colors on simulated SMVs resulted in the triangle with a fluorescent orange center and reflective borders that is still used today. Goodyear first unveiled the SMV on the back of a farm wagon towed by a Ford tractor on a cross-country public awareness promotion.
The formal introduction came in 1962 at a University of Iowa safety seminar. Deere & Co. played a major role in the adoption of the emblem by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers.
In 1963, the president of Ohio State University dedicated the emblem and the Agricultural Engineering Journal printed its first article with color illustrations. The National Safety Council promoted the adoption of the emblem.
For more information, please view the full release here.
Can Crop Residue Be Harvested Sustainably?
As farmers are asked about their interest in supplying the growing demand for crop residue, most often corn stover, they quickly bring up the issue of maintaining soil productivity. Many farmers value the content of soil organic matter and see it as a measure of the soil to produce a high yielding crop.
Markets for crop residue such as biomass pellets for combustion or feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol production are not well established in Michigan. At the same time, the loss of hay acres and short 2012 crop in many areas has caused an increase in livestock feed prices throughout the state, which has beef and dairy producers evaluating alternative feedstocks, especially corn stover.
For some farms, soil productivity is not at optimum levels and therefore these farms may not be good candidates for crop residue removal while others may benefit from reducing residue to draw-down very high nutrient levels and allow future manure applications. A few calculations can help you to evaluate if and how much corn stover may be sustainably removed on your farm.
First, it is important to know that only about 20% of crop residue winds up in the soil organic matter pool. The other 80% is respired by soil microorganisms as they convert the residue into more stable soil carbon. Additionally, about 2% of existing soil organic matter is decomposed annually. On a typical Michigan soil, about 6,250 lb. of crop residue are needed each year to replace these losses.
Survey Suggests Slowdown in Land Price Increases
Results of the University of Missouri (MU) Extension annual land values opinion survey show that land prices in the state have continued to climb. However, the survey suggests a slowdown in the next year.
“The average value of good cropland by our survey was $4,510 per acre,” says Ron Plain, an MU Extension agricultural economist and co-author of the report. “That was up 17% compared to July 2012.”
Good pastureland was up 12%, with a statewide average of $2,492 per acre. Timber and hunting/recreational land was 10% higher at $1,817 and $1,724, respectively.
“A lot of the respondents think we may be, at least short term, nearing a peak in Missouri farmland values,” Plain says. “They indicated that they thought cropland would increase between 2% and 3% in the coming year, pastureland between 1% and 2%, and other land about 1%.”
For the past 40 years, MU Extension has conducted an annual survey to track the value of farmland in different regions of Missouri. Plain says it is called an opinion survey because it doesn’t include hard sales data to back up the numbers.
“There are no reporting requirements on land sales, so if you want to get down to hard numbers you have to go courthouse by courthouse pulling the data to see what actual sales values are,” Plain says. “That’s more costly than we’ve got time and resources to do, so we survey informed people like land appraisers, real estate agents and lenders about what land is selling for in their area.”
For more information, please view the full release here.
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