EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
by Mark Anderson Executive Director North American Limousin Foundation
NALF is approaching its fiscal year end for 2020-2021 at the time of this writing . In spite of challenges with Covid-19 and drought conditions in regions of the U . S ., we are coming off a very successful year for our breeders as well as the Foundation . The Spring bull sale season was as successful as any during the last 10 years with sale averages improving measurably over the previous year .
Much of that credit goes to our breeders and members who have made a dedicated effort to supply accurate performance data along with genomics on sires as well as females through the LimVision Cowherd Project . This enhances our EPD accuracy to our member ’ s cattle when making mating decisions that are in line with current industry demands .
The tools we are using today are much more advanced and informational , beginning with our National Cattle Evaluation that is produced at International Genetic Solutions . The inclusion of genomics , along with performance and pedigree data in a national cattle evaluation includes over 18 breeds that are all across breed comparable on their EPDs . This has been invaluable throughout the seedstock and commercial cattle industries .
The exciting element is the continual improvement process of that evaluation and its reported accuracies . As most of you are aware , NALF has incorporated the inclusion of nearly 86,000 head of actual carcass data phenotype records into the IGS evaluation which has greatly enhanced carcass trait EPD accuracy for many pedigree lines of cattle in our current evaluation .
At the current rate of continued additional inclusions , this will lead to NALF contributing more actual carcass record phenotypes to cattle evaluations by the end of the first quarter of next year as compared to any other breed in the U . S . It is rather fitting that the “ carcass breed ” will eventually take the lead in supplying this data set to the industry .
The inclusion of actual carcass data , updated USMARC sire data , along with updated genomic marker panels at IGS has been beneficial to both Limousin and Lim-Flex marbling EPDs . Both classifications have improved 0.2-0.3 the past 15 months with recent matings by members and improved accuracies of the EPD within our breed data base inputs .
Demand factors and signals have changed dramatically the last 10 years in the commercial cattle business . Quality is being paid for as it never has before . This is evidenced by the premiums paid on upper 2 / 3 of Choice and Prime cattle . Currently our spread between Choice and Select products in the U . S . is at $ 30 / cwt . on a carcass
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basis . This increase has happened all while we have continued to throw an increasing supply of Choice and higher grading cattle into the supply system .
The U . S . slaughter data reflects we are annually processing nearly 84 % of the commercial fed cattle grading Choice or higher and price premiums have continued to increase . The abundance of high quality product has dramatically improved beef demand here in the U . S . since the ‘ 90s when we were actually losing demand for our product .
Just as impressive in the quality grade chart supplied by Cattle- Fax ( figure 1 ), is the increase in production of Prime and upper 2 / 3 of Choice cattle since 2005 . Premiums paid for both classifications have sent the demand signal to the industry to supply the product to the consumer . As evidenced by the chart , Prime production has increased from 2.5 % to 14 % of the U . S . annual cattle fed cattle supply . Upper 2 / 3 of Choice cattle have dramatically increased from 10 % to 24 % now in 2021 . Low Choice has replaced Select as the new “ commodity product ”.
The graphic in figure 2 reflects that supply of upper 2 / 3 of Choice and Prime cattle has increased from 17 % in 2000 to nearly 34 % now in 2021 as indicated
Figure 1 .
Figure 2 .
by the blue line . Select production has decreased from nearly 37 % to slightly less than 14 % of fed cattle harvested annually over the same 20 year period . The remainder of the production would mostly fall into the low Choice category for slightly over 50 % of the remaining production . continued on page 14