Long Term Beef Trend To Think About

Long Term Beef Trend To Think About

At last week's Idaho Cattle and Washington Cattlemen's Mid-year meeting, Livestock Marketing Information Center Director Jim Robb says that one long-term beef industry trend is moving away from beef as strictly a commodity and that in the future there will be even more differential pricing.

Robb: "Well first of all, it is a long-term trend so it's not an overnight thing. We still do many things in some parts of the country and they work successfully. But in the long-term trend of things, we are moving away from the packer being able to go into the packing plant and find the product to move through a program. These programs are much more detailed and really do over time reaching back into the production system — whether to the feedlot and potentially the cow-calf side. That is part of the evolution in the marketplace. Consumers want different things — both in the U.S. and overseas. I think it is something to keep in the back of your mind. I don't think you change your marketing plan immediately but in the long-term context you need to think about how we will market cattle and how you participate in that system."

He continues .

Robb: "In looking at the history of this industry, many years ago we debated if we were really getting paid for our vaccination programs, and the research clearly shows that we do from a market standpoint. Were we getting paid for the genetic base in our animals and clearly we moved to many more black-hided animals to capture that. So it is long-term and this is a long-term industry but I think we've seen some of those question in the past and they have benefited and it brought more dollars to the bottom line."

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