Recurrent drought has combined with a smaller cattle inventory to begin shifting the cattle industry, centered in the southern and central Plains, to the north and east, says Meatingplace in a seven-part story, “Dry Age Beef.” Texas, which fattens a quarter of slaughter cattle, will lose ground while operators in No 2 feeder Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas expand. The news site says the western Corn Belt is regaining its role as a cattle feeder with the help of the ethanol co-product, distillers dried grains, which costs less than corn. For more from Meatingplace, click here.
With the long-term decline in slaughter cattle volume, packers are closing plants on the periphery and concentrating operations in the new Beef Belt, says the Meatingplace story. Some analysts say the industry is over-built by 10-15 percent, so plant closures are a consequence. When a plant employs 2,000 people, the impact of a closing on the local economy is profound. In Plainview, Texas, where Cargill closed a plant in 2013, the workers amounted to 13 percent of the county’s laborforce. Meanwhile, Denison, Iowa, with four packing plants, calls itself the Capital of the Meat Empire.
Livestock economist Glynn Tonsor of Kansas State University said the processing industry is slowly moving north and east from its traditional setting. In a KSU release, he says the industry is following the cattle supply and shuttering operations in Texas and nearby states, a region under severe drought in the past few years.