Increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising temperatures, and altered precipitation patterns will affect agricultural productivity, according to USDA's Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States report. Projections for crops and livestock production systems reveal that climate change effects over the next 25 years will be mixed. The continued degree of change in the climate by midcentury and beyond is expected to have overall detrimental effects on most crops and livestock

Pork and Poultry Production Forecast Higher in 2014, Beef Lower

Despite improvements in soil moisture and pasture conditions in many areas of the Central and Northern United States, continuation of the drought in the Southwestern and Southern Plains States generated some fiscal pain for cow-calf producers as feeder cattle and calf prices began to deteriorate over the last weeks in April. Feeder cattle prices began to drop as a result of declining summer pasture prospects and increasing hay and other feed prices. Feeder cattle sales (AMS National Feeder & Stock Cattle Summary, SJ_LS850) have been averaging almost 5 percent above year-earlier sales since the first week in March. Many of these cattle have weighed over 600 lbs. As became evident with March’s net placements of feeder cattle in feedlots of 1,000 head or more—up by almost 6 percent over March 2012 placements (Cattle on Feed)—many of these heavier cattle were headed to feedlots, a move that could also appear as relatively heavy placements in April-May as cattle are removed from graze-out wheat.

Another result of the drought in Southern areas is continued high levels of cow slaughter relative to January 1 cow inventories comparable with—though slightly lower than—the high rates of slaughter of 2011 and 2012, which have led cow prices to slip. For most of March and April, federally inspected (FI) weekly beef cow slaughter has averaged about 9 percent higher year-over-year than in 2012. Weekly total FI cow slaughter has averaged almost 7 percent higher year-over-year as a result of a 5-percent increase in dairy cow slaughter during the same weeks.

The sudden and widespread appearance of a swine virus deadly to young pigs is raising questions about the bio-security shield designed to protect the U.S. food supply. The swine-only virus poses no danger to humans or other animals, and the meat from infected pigs is safe for people to eat. Though previously seen in parts of Asia and Europe, the virus now has spread into five leading hog-raising U.S. states. How it arrived in the U.S. remains a mystery. While the U.S. imports millions of pigs each year from Canada, it imports pigs from virtually no other country, and no Canadian cases of the virus have been confirmed