USDA is overhauling regional cash fed cattle reporting as a persistent data blackout spreads across major feeding states, implementing directives under two White House Executive Orders aimed at livestock competition and rancher support.
Beginning with the afternoon market reports on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will begin publishing an aggregated cash cattle regional report that combines data from Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The goal: restore vital price transparency to the Southern Plains and Western feeding belts, where shrinking negotiated cash trade had caused published USDA market reports to go completely dark under federal confidentiality restrictions.
Mixed Reaction: Urgent Stopgap or Formula Lifeline?
Market analysts welcome the move as an urgently needed stopgap, even if it does not solve the root structural issue facing negotiated price discovery.
“I think it is good,” says Don Close, Terrain senior animal protein analyst. “It is not the best alternative, but it is good. We need something. We can’t continue to rock on like we were.”
According to Close, the blackout left cattle producers trading at a severe information disadvantage.
“It is critically important,” Close explains. “It provides a foundation so all market participants know where the market’s trading and where to start negotiations when they want to sell their cattle. It prevents an unfair advantage from the packers knowing what the value is or what they’re willing to pay, but the producers not knowing.”
Close points out documented cash prices do not just affect negotiated fed sales — they anchor the broader risk landscape.
“It’s critically important in determining the basis between their cash transaction and the futures price, and it also gives direction to the futures market on to if they should be higher or lower, and where the futures trade should be,” he stresses. “So it’s multi-dimensional in why it’s important. Just knowing that we will have documented prices reported will help stabilize the market going forward.”
Not all market veterans view the reporting change as a victory for cattle feeders.
Brad Kooima, commodity broker with Sioux Center, Iowa-based Kooima Kooima Varilek Trading Inc., pushes back against the notion producers in the country were operating completely blind.
“People don’t know what the cash cattle are bringing? Give me a break,” Kooima argues. “If you don’t know what cash cattle are worth in your state, then I’m sorry, you better work a little harder. The ridiculousness, that idea that you don’t know what cash cattle are worth is unbelievable.”
Kooima warns instead of revitalizing negotiated cash trading, creating an aggregated regional benchmark primarily bails out packers and feedyards operating on formula contracts, which depend on a published cash base price to settle transactions.
“I don’t see that it’s going to improve anything. In fact, it’ll just make it easier for those guys to price their formulas,” Kooima says. “And we don’t need any more formulas. We need more price discovery. ... All we’re doing is helping the formula guys.”
Anatomy of the Data Blackout
Under Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR) confidentiality rules — specifically the 3/70/20 guideline designed to protect commercial proprietary positions — USDA must withhold regional price summaries when too few transactions occur, protecting individual feedyards and packers from having proprietary business exposed.
As cattle procurement has migrated toward alternative marketing agreements (AMAs) and formula-based pricing, the volume of negotiated cash trade has cratered. According to USDA data, cash purchases accounted for more than 50% of fed cattle transactions in 2005, but plunged to less than 18% in 2025.
When cash volumes dried up in the Southern Plains, confidentiality filters kicked in, silencing weekly reports across several feeding centers.
“Overall, I think this is a practical response using data AMS already collects. The problem is real and fairly recent,” says Josh Maples, Mississippi State University assistant Extension director and associate professor of agricultural economics.
Maples tracks the exact timeline of how USDA reports went silent across key feeding territories:
- Colorado: Withheld under confidentiality rules since late 2022.
- Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexico: Withheld every week since early July 2026.
- Kansas: Withheld every week since late August 2026.
“The new report pools those three areas so that a price can be reported,” Maples says. “This is a reporting change, not a market change. It uses data packers already report and does not create new cash trades, it makes trades that already happen visible.”
Kooima points to the geographic makeup of the new pool as evidence of how distorted the cash market has become.
“Does not anybody feel the irony of Texas and Kansas — those two states — have to join up with all these other ones to come up with a region?” Kooima notes. “Colorado hasn’t had a cash market for years because they fail for confidentiality. It feels to me like the horse is out of the barn and now we’re trying to make a rule that this isn’t gonna affect anything anyway.”
The Administration’s Approach
Announcing the change in an Oct. 20 press release, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says the action implements directives under President Trump’s Executive Orders on “Supporting American Ranchers” and “Promoting Fair Competition in Livestock Markets and Expanding Market Access for American Meat Producers.”
“President Trump tasked our agency with bringing clarity and consistency to cattle markets and protecting rancher viability, and today’s action is one of several steps we are taking to deliver on that promise,” Rollins says. “Maintaining reliable and transparent price information is critical to a well-functioning cattle market. We are making these changes to address those challenges and make the best use possible of the market information that AMS gathers.”
USDA confirms that because the new report re-aggregates data AMS already receives under the LMR framework, it imposes no new reporting burdens or regulatory requirements on covered packers.
Does Aggregation Move the Price Needle?
While visible price tags help feedyards establish leverage, Maples cautions feeders not to expect a dramatic price shift simply because regions are grouped together.
“Will it make a difference? For transparency, yes. For price levels, it depends on the week,” Maples notes. “On average this year, Southern Plains cash prices (while they were still being reported) ran within a few cents of Nebraska and Iowa-Minnesota, but individual weeks sometimes differed by $3 to $4 per cwt. in either direction.”
Furthermore, Maples highlights two critical questions market watchers will be monitoring as AMS rolls out the new report:
- LRP and 5-Area Calculations: “Since late August, the 5-Area average, which is also the LRP [Livestock Risk Protection] fed cattle settlement price, has been built entirely from Nebraska and Iowa-Minnesota trades. USDA has not said whether the new report will bring Southern Plains trades back into that average.”
- Historical Data: “I am also curious whether AMS will be able to backfill some history of this new Texas/Okla./N.M./Kan./Colo. report, which would be helpful.”
Structural Solutions: The Case for a Permanent Fix
While the combined report restores visibility for now, Close warns relying on executive administrative adjustments leaves lingering uncertainty for the livestock sector.
“The first thing I would say is this being done with an executive order. It’s another temporary fix,” Close cautions. “We need permanent stability. With an executive order, could it suddenly be up in the air again? It could once this administration is over.”
Close also outlines what he views as a more durable, structural solution to thin cash volumes: Redefining what counts as a negotiated trade in the mandatory reporting pool.
“If you were to incorporate the [dollars] over the market top — cattle that trade on over the top — and if you were to include the cattle that are a negotiated grid, that’s a negotiated trade,” Close argues. “Now they don’t know the final outcome because they don’t know the premium and discount schedule of how the cattle actually performed, but the base price of those cattle are negotiated. So if they would include those two categories into the negotiated bundle, there’d be plenty of cattle traded and that is my personal best fix.”
Kooima, however, argues USDA missed the most straightforward administrative fix: abolishing the confidentiality threshold altogether.
“Why didn’t USDA just get rid of the confidentiality rule?” Kooima asks. “[That] absolutely would have got everything else done that they’re trying to do here instead of regionalizing this thing into a bigger deal. This is an old rule. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it’s time to move on.”
The Bottom Line for Producers
For beef producers preparing marketing strategies for late fall, the new regional report on Oct. 26 brings welcome illumination back to the Southern Plains and Colorado. While it does not reverse the secular trend toward formula contracts, restoring public transaction records removes the blindfold on basis calculations, futures price discovery and feedyard negotiations — even as the debate rages over whether regional band-aids help price discovery or simply entrench the formula trade.
