The past few years of drought has been dismantling the North American cowherd with a 3% drop in cattle inventory for U.S. and Canadian producers since 2012.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, the U.S. and Canada’s combined herd total as of July 1, 2014, came in at 108.3 million head. That’s a 3% decline since July 1, 2012, when 111.3 million head of cattle were counted.
Individually, the U.S. saw a 3% drop with 95 million head of cattle currently tallied compared to 97.8 million in July 2012.
Canada hasn’t seen as drastic of change with 1% fewer cattle accounted for in 2014. On July 1, 2013, Canada had 13.5 million head and a year later only 200,000 cattle have left the herd.
The complete report can be found here.
