USDA Rolls Out Dashboard To Help Ranchers, Producers, Packers

The USDA has a lot of archival data from livestock auctions across the country.  But having the data isn’t helpful if it can’t benefit those in the industry.

Lonnie Peetz with USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, AMS, noted the Department did not have a way to provide one price for the whole country.  Which led to a year-plus long development, culminating in the recent rollout of an on-line National Feeder and Stocker Cattle Dashboard.

“Where we could have all that information, especially now since the cow herd is at the lowest level in over 70 years," Peetz said.  "We felt that the stakeholders within the beef industry needed to have a place to be able to get all this information downloaded so they could make real-time and smart marketing decisions for their own operations.”

What Is The National Herd Up To?

Peetz said not only will producers utilize dashboard, but both feedyards and packers will benefit from this information, so they can make marketing decisions, whether current or future decisions, four, five, six months, even a year out.

“So especially with the feedlot placements, the producers can actually see some of these over 600 pounds and extrapolate by utilizing some other USDA reports to where the placements could possibly be, as well as the cow herd retention whenever we have the percent heifers that are going through auctions, and we can then extrapolate, ‘okay, is the herd expansion going to happen? Are we in contraction? Or are we just in status quo?’.  Producers can actually look at these prices to make some of their marketing decisions for the coming week and to see whether they want to procure more cattle or whether they just want to stay on the sidelines for a week or so, just to kind of let the market settle somewhere where they feel the most comfortable to procure those animals,” Peetz said. 

Click Here to check out the  the USDA’s National Feeder and Stocker Cattle Dashboard.

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