The Diverse Structure and Organization of U.S. Beef Cow-Calf Farms

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and, where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or a part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.

Input saving possibilities and practices contributing to more efficient beef production in Sweden

“…This confirms findings in previous studies, where the need for diversification of farm production is associated with the availability of feed and the risk of changes in feed prices (Featherstone et al 1997, Langemeier et al 1992, McBride and Mathews 2011. According to Rizov et al (2012), the decision to diversify production and thus manage the input price risk and ensure a better outcome in an uncertain production environment needs to be carefully considered.…”

“…Overall, grazing is typically considered the most cost-effective way of meeting the nutritional needs of cattle. Long-grazing systems are low-cost systems using minimal quantities of supplemental feed (mechanically harvested, stored, hauled) (McBride andMathews 2011, Ramsey et al 2005) and can be expected to bring the highest economic benefits. Availability of a large area of semi-natural pasture and high environmental grants per hectare for such pasture are reported to be preconditions for good profitability of Swedish beef production (Kumm 2009, Salevid andKumm 2011).…”

GHG Mitigation Potential of Different Grazing Strategies in the United States Southern Great Plains

“…4 EF is the emission factor for N2O emissions atmospheric deposition of nitrogen on soils, which takes a default value of 0.01 with uncertainty range between 0.002 and 0.05 [27]. Without further information, we will assume default values for both φ and 4 EF .…”

“…Therefore, an ideal LCA model is one that is regionally specific. Our LCA modeling is applicable to the cow-calf only production phase in the Southern Great Plains (SGP) region of USA, where one third of US cow-calf only farms are located [4], and no known net-emission LCA study regarding cow-calf production on perennial pastures has been conducted.…”

Accumulating through food crisis? Farmers, commodity traders and the distributional politics of financialization

“…In contrast, it takes just 13 weeks to bring chickens from zygote-state to slaughter weight, and just 45 weeks for hogs. As a result of the longer biological cycle of cows, it takes a longer time for cattle producers to adjust population levels to new feed grain price conditions, and they are thus particularly harmed by grain price volatility (MacDonald 2008;McBride and Matthews 2011). In regard to crop producers, the fact that wheat growers appear to have more volatile earnings than corn and soybean producers is also in part attributable to the irreducible biophysical specificities of different forms of farming.…”