Livestock Market Update for The Second Half of 2024

July 2024 marks the first time since 2016 that USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service has not published its July Cattle Inventory report, which would typically come out this week and contain data about the size of the calf crop, which producers and analysts would use to gauge if the cattle inventory is expanding, contracting or holding steady. In an announcement in April, NASS cited budget constraints as the reason for cancelling this report along with county level production and yield data and the objective cotton yields survey.

The 2024 cattle inventory is the lowest it has been since 1951, which has sent beef prices soaring. The hog industry is looking profitable, too, but has a lot of ground to make up for with last year’s losses as well as supply chain complications caused by California’s Proposition 12. Poultry including eggs, broilers and turkeys are continuing to contend with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI). This Market Intel will use data from several USDA reports to assemble the market outlook for animal proteins for the second half of 2024.

Cattle: Supply

USDA estimated in its January Cattle Inventory report that all cattle and calves in the United States were 87.2 million, the lowest since 1951. The country’s cattle producers, facing stress from multiple years of drought and high supply costs, have been marketing a lot of cows and heifers since 2020 (Figure 1), so fewer of these female cattle are available to produce calves. USDA’s July Cattle Inventory previously provided a breakdown of the U.S. cattle inventory including the calf crop for the first half of the year. Without this report in 2024, it is much more difficult to estimate what cattle supplies look like for the remainder of the year. Farmers and stakeholders will have to wait until January to receive this data. In the meantime, analysts will be using what they do have available to piece together the overall market outlook.