Just days after fires moved across the Texas Panhandle, the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) hosted the 2024 Cattle Raisers Convention and Expo on March 22-23 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Despite anticipating record-high calf values, the beef industry will start feeling the pinch of tight fed cattle supplies coming in the next year, Kevin Good, vice president of market analysis at CattleFax, told attendees at the 2024 CattleFax Industry Outlook Seminar, held on Feb. 2.

For farmers who are in grain, oil, energy and hay production, the CattleFax session at NCBA National Convention in Orlando may have had the answers to your questions.

Few times in history has the cattle industry offered more opportunity for profit to conscientious producers than right now. That was the primary message of CattleFax CEO Randy Blach’s executive summary at CattleFax’s Industry Outlook Seminar on Feb. 2. 

“Where’s my El Nino?”
That’s the question many farmers and ranchers have been asking over the past year, and the answer is one many might not want to hear: El Nino is here, but it’s already on its way out the door.

Profitability for cattle producers – especially the cow-calf operator – is expected to improve to levels the industry hasn’t seen since 2013-15, according to CattleFax CEO Randy Blach.

The three-year lament appears to be ending as readings in the Pacific Ocean portend warming waters in 2023. El Nino weather patterns, when warming Pacific waters create moisture in much of the West and Midwest states, have been missing since 2019. La Nina, the uglier twin sibling of El Nino, where colder ocean temperatures lead to warmer and less water, has hung around since then worsened the Western drought.

Producers can expect to hear the latest on production management and beef technology and get the latest industry market outlook at the 2023 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show in New Orleans, Feb. 1-3.