Thirty years ago, the weather on Annie Doerr’s family ranch felt reliable. Now that she’s taken over from her parents, it’s been anything but. In recent years, drought has made finding good pastureland for beef cattle to graze increasingly difficult.
“I always pray for a normal year,” she said, “which I don’t really know what that looks like anymore.”
Drought has affected operations at her 500-head beef cattle farm in Creighton, Nebraska, less than an hour from the South Dakota border.
In any given year, the nation experiences dry periods without rainfall. Livestock producers mitigate the effects by providing additional water sources directly to animals or crops, such as water lines to livestock or irrigation for crops. Droughts occur when dry conditions last longer than usual and water isn’t replenished to crops, groundwater, lakes or other bodies of water, resulting in water-supply problems, according to the United States Geological Survey.
During droughts, Doerr said she weans her calves off milk earlier than usual, a common practice in dry years, but one that can also put young cattle at higher risk of dying. She also slows the growth of her herd, and spends more money on sourcing feed for cattle.
This same scenario has played out again and again across the nation’s major cattle-producing states.
The size of the overall U.S. beef cattle herd has continued to decline since 1975, a trend largely attributed to an increase in global beef production and cattle imports. But at the beginning of 2024, the nation’s inventory of beef cattle hit a 61-year low, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In the nation’s top 10 beef-producing states — responsible for nearly 60% of the country’s beef production — half reported the lowest number of cattle since 1995 as of the beginning of this year, according to an Investigate Midwest analysis of the USDA’s data.
Droughts starting in 2020 are a contributing factor in the nation’s historically low beef inventory, according to USDA research. Nebraska and Missouri — two of the top 10 beef-producing states — experienced the largest decline in the quality of June pastureland since 2020 compared to the other top states, according to an Investigate Midwest analysis of USDA data.
Finding land with plentiful grazing for cattle is difficult in drought years. An analysis of USDA pastureland data shows that grazable Nebraska pastureland shrunk by a third since 2019 during the month of June.
Climate change has made dealing with droughts more complicated.
Current research shows climate change has caused more frequent large rainfall events coupled with months of zero precipitation. This volatility has made relying on typical weather patterns and grazing conditions difficult for the nation’s beef producers.
Doerr said a successful cattle operation comes down to having enough feed. Drought can ruin the available pasture to graze in summer as well as the harvested hay animals eat in the winter, leading some producers to cull their herds — or “get rid of mouths” — she said.
When a drought hits livestock producers, the ripple effect can last for years. Ranchers, like industry experts, also attribute recent drought years to the nation’s historic low for beef cattle.
Click here to read more investigatemidwest.org
Photo Credit: science-photo-library-igor-stevanovic
Categories: Missouri, Crops, Weather