Growing Beef Newsletter
June 2024, Volume 14, Issue 12
2022 Census of Agriculture - What does it say about beef cow operations and inventories?
Russ Euken, ISU extension livestock specialist, and Lee Schulz, ISU extension livestock economist
The 2022 Census of Agriculture full report was released in February. It contains a wealth of information. So much so that it can be somewhat difficult to sort through it all. Although there are more frequent reports on cattle inventories, the Census provides data on the number of operations and inventories by size category. It also provides information at the national, state, and county level and for different enterprise types such as beef cows and cattle on feed. The Quick Stats database can be used to retrieve, in an Excel spreadsheet, customizable queries of Census data. Within Quick Stats, data is available for the last six Census years―1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2022. Trends can be identified by looking across multiple years of data. This month’s article provides information on beef cow operations and inventory. Data is summarized at the national, regional, and county level for Iowa for the last three Censuses. Last month’s article covered cattle on feed for slaughter in a similar fashion.
Beef cow numbers nationally
On December 1, 2022, the United States had 29,214,479 beef cows in inventory on 622,162 operations. The inventory of beef cows decreased over 2.5 million from 2017 to 2022 but was up slightly from 2012. The number of beef cow operations was down about 105,000 from both 2012 and 2017. Most of the decrease in operations was smaller size operations with larger size operations showing some increase. However, the percent of operations in each size category has not changed significantly. The smallest size category of 1 to 9 head had 33.6% of the beef cow operations in 2022 but only 3.3% of the inventory while in 2017 this was almost identical at 33.6% and 3.5%, respectively. Operations that had 500 to 999 head in inventory total 0.9% of the operations in 2022 but had 12.0% of the inventory. In 2017, this size group had 0.6% of the operations and 9.3% of the inventory of beef cows.
Texas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Oklahoma are the top four beef cow inventory states. Iowa ranks 13th in beef cow inventory, a couple spots lower than in 2017 and 2012. Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee are the top five states in number of beef cow operations. Iowa ranks 8th, one spot higher than in 2017 and 2012.
Beef cow numbers in the north central United States
Of the twelve states in the north central United States, four states dominate in beef cow inventories with Missouri at 1,968,954 beef cows, Nebraska at 1,721,243, South Dakota at 1,538,320, and Kansas at 1,332,657. North Dakota and Iowa are next in line with 886,405 and 858,556 beef cows, respectively. Minnesota had 364,629 beef cows and Illinois had 331,471 beef cows followed by Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan which had the lowest beef cow inventories in this group of states. Missouri has the most beef cow operations with 39,000 and Kansas is next with 19,848 operations. Iowa is third with 17,214 beef cow operations. Missouri and Iowa tend to have more smaller size operations. For example, 73.1% of Missouri beef cow operations and 69.7% of Iowa beef cow operations have less than 50 head of beef cows in inventory while 55.0% and 41.1% of the beef cow operations in Nebraska and South Dakota, respectively, have less than 50 head.
County-level Iowa beef cow numbers
All Iowa counties have beef cow operations and inventories. However, operation numbers and inventories vary greatly by county. Jackson County in east central Iowa has the most operations with 412 and Humboldt County in north central Iowa has the least with 33 operations. Jackson County also has the highest reported inventory with 26,607 beef cows. Ringold, Allamakee, Dubuque, and Sioux Counties round out the top five for inventory. Beef cow inventories by size category (1 to 9 head, 10 to 19 head, 20 to 49 head, 50 to 99 head, 100 to 199 head, 200 to 499 head, 500 or more head) are withheld from being published for many individual counties to avoid disclosing data for individual operations. In Iowa, beef cow operations and inventories are concentrated in the northeastern and southcentral part of the state with a few counties in southwest, northwest, and west central Iowa having larger numbers of operations and beef cows. Nationally, on a county basis Iowa counties do not rank very high in numbers of beef cow operations or inventory. Several Texas counties lead the nation with around 2,000 beef cow operations per county while two counties in western Nebraska lead in inventories with 184,688 beef cows on 466 operations in Cherry County and 92,500 beef cows on 607 operations in Holt County.
Iowa has many small operations with 69.7% of all beef cow operations having an inventory of 1 to 49 head. This size category has 26.0% of the total beef cows in the state. On the other hand, 64.8% of the beef cows are on operations that have 50 to 499 beef cows in inventory. This size of operation accounts for 29.7% of the total operations in the state. Most individual counties in Iowa are similar in percent of operations and percent of beef cow inventory across the different size categories.
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