By Stephen Smoot
Although the United States Department of Agriculture forecasts a dip in beef production this year, West Virginia has experienced robust production thus far.
At the Agricultural Outlook Forum in late February of this year, USDA officials predicted that red meat and poultry production would fail to match the 2022 record set of 107.5 billion pounds. The report indicated that the sector would continue “to face challenges to both supply and demand from a wide range of factors.” It went on to explain that “shortages of labor and constraints on logistics continued to limit the ability of the sector to manage throughput, and rising costs of inputs, including feed and energy, reduced the profitability of the industry.”
The American Farm Bureau in January of this year described beef production in 2022 as being “filled with mountains for U.S. cattle producers to climb.” Additionally, “the West and Southern Plains experienced some of the worst drought conditions in recent history.”
“On Oct. 30, 2022, 64 percent of the cattle in the U.S. were in regions where more than 40 percent of pasture and rangeland conditions were rated as poor to very poor,” the Farm Bureau reported, adding that “these conditions were among the top reasons we saw contraction in the cattle industry in 2022.”
Due to the challenges, the USDA expected producers to be cautious and pull back on production. Additionally, cattle production declined for the fourth straight year. On Jan. 1, total cattle on all feedlots totaled about 14.2 million, a four percent decline from last year. Total cattle off of feedlots on the same date had dropped nearly three percent from the previous year.
The USDA predicted higher levels of imports to meet demand, but in a tightening global market.
The latest USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service numbers for West Virginia red meat production, however, run counter to national expectations in February.
In May, commercial red meat production for West Virginia reached approximately 800,000 pounds, a 26 percent jump over last May’s numbers. Commercial cattle slaughter also rose by the same percentage for May 2023 over May 2022, totaling 1,174,000 pounds live weight.
Expanded production in West Virginia has remained a theme for the year. In March, production expanded by 17 percent over March 2022 numbers while commercial cattle slaughter was up by 13 percent.
Nationally, so far in 2023 beef production has increased to 27.1 billion pounds, based on current slaughter data and “a faster pace of marketings expected later in the year.” Also “higher anticipated feeder cattle placements in third-quarter 2023 are expected to raise fed cattle marketings in early 2024, which minimally raises the beef production forecast next year to 24.8 billion pounds.”
The USDA still expects an overall decline in production in 2024 nationally due to an eight percent “decline in per capita disappearance of beef.” The term disappearance, according to the USDA, is “often used as a proxy for consumption.” Domestic production is cited as the main cause and “beef production is forecast to decrease more than eight percent as U.S. cattle supplies tighten.”
