“We got $10 in new spending over that 20 years; meanwhile our pork and poultry competitors got $110,” said Nevil Speer, an animal scientist at Western Kentucky University. “You can’t grow an industry without new revenue coming in, and we basically worked in a stagnant industry for 20 years.

As Interior secretary, succeeding Colorado’s Ken Salazar, Jewell oversees an $11.5 billion annual budget, 70,000 federal employees and nearly 30 percent of the entire U.S. land mass, including national parks and wildlife refuges. Interior’s policies also impact live stock.

The nation’s livestock industry can find itself at odds with the U.S. oil and gas industry with concerns about potential groundwater contamination caused by such “fracking,” which involves injecting highly pressurized fluids into subterranean shale formations to create new veins or fractures, improving recovery of underground oil and gas.

A Nevadan who served as a public lands, mining and wildlife advisor for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from January 2003 to January 2011 will be named acting national director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages 253 million acres, or one-eighth of the nation’s entire land mass, mostly in the West.

Ethanol production now absorbs more than 40 percent of the annual U.S. corn harvest, or about five billion bushels a year, driving up the cost of corn. A federal Renewable Fuel Standard requires 10 percent of the nation’s gasoline supply come from ethanol.

With Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson resigning after four years, the president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) doubts the EPA’s corn-based ethanol mandate will be revoked soon despite a drastic reduction of corn available for cattle feed and a sharp spike in its cost.

With corn prices soaring and potato prices declining, more farmers and ranchers are feeding spuds to their livestock, but those attending a workshop at the 45th Annual Idaho Potato Conference were cautioned that cattle can choke or bloat if their potato consumption is not closely monitored and.

Missouri Farm Bureau President Blake Hurst said thieves are targeting large bundles of hay left out in fields to be harvested, hauling them off and selling them. With winter approaching and grass dying out in one of the worst droughts in decades, unguarded bales are tempting as the price of hay escalates.

A Cook County Circuit Court judge in Chicago ruled on Monday, Nov. 26, that a group of 24 Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grain pit traders and brokers can proceed with a federal lawsuit against the CME Group Inc. for electronic trading rules they fear will eliminate their jobs.

The Idaho State Department of Agriculture’s expansion of a brucellosis Designated Surveillance Area (DSA) in eastern Idaho to include Fremont County will help ensure the integrity of breeding herds in the Greater Yellowstone region, the immediate past president of the Idaho Cattle Association (ICA) says.