Cattle on Feed and Record High August Fed Cattle Weights

Sep 26, 2024

By Josh Maples

The latest USDA Cattle on Feed report was released Friday and showed placements of cattle into feedlots during August were 1.4 percent lower than during August 2023. Marketings of fed cattle out of feedlots were down about 3.5 percent from a year ago, partially due to one less business day in August 2024 than in August 2023. Both of these numbers were within pre-report expectations and will likely not be big market movers.

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Most of the decline in placements from a year ago occurred in placements of cattle weighing less than 800 pounds. Placements of cattle in this weight range were 3.4 percent lower while placements of cattle weighing more than 800 pounds were 1.4 percent higher. Placements in both Kansas and Nebraska were down about 3 percent while placements in Texas were down nearly 6 percent as compared to a year ago. Placements in Colorado were the exception and were up nearly 30 percent.

Despite the lower placements, the total number of cattle in feedlots with more than 1,000 head capacity on September 1st was up 0.6 percent compared to a year ago. This continues the trend of cattle staying in feedlots longer.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators