Interregional competition in the U.S. cattle feeding/fed-beef economy : with emphasis on the southern Plains

Typescript (photocopy).The U.S. cattle feeding/fed-beef economy will likely face a rapidly changing economic environment as a result of escalating energy and labor costs, population increases and interregional migrations, regional variations in per capita disposable income, inflation, and highly fluctuating livestock and feed grain prices. This study utilized a multiproduct transshipment model of the U.S. cattle and beef economy to examine interregional economic relationships based on industry conditions during 1980. In addition, nine alternative models were designed to examine how changes in feed grain and feeder cattle supplies, in fed-beef demands, and in slaughter and transportation costs affect optimum feedlot and slaughter plant location and production levels. Results suggest that cattle feeding and slaughtering firms in the Southern and Central Plains, especially West Texas-West Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, enjoy considerable locational advantages due to proximity to feed grain and feeder cattle supplies, access to major fed-beef markets, and economies of size associated with the feeding and slaughter industries. Optimum feeding levels determined by the models studied indicate that Southern and Central Plains and Corn Belt feeders would continue to account for over 75 percent of all cattle fed in the U.S. assuming no dramatic adjustments in regional feedlot or slaughter plant capacities. Differences in slaughter costs, especially variable costs, between the Southern States and other major slaughter regions as the Corn Belt and Central Plains afford a competitive advantage to southern slaughter firms. The possible elimination of regional cost differences due to increased energy costs or unionization of labor supplies would result in a shifting of cattle feeding and slaughter from the Southern regions to the Central Plains and Corn Belt as revealed by results of an alternative model...