The number of cattle on Canadian farms has fallen precipitously in the wake of last year’s Prairie drought.
A Statistics Canada livestock inventory report released Tuesday showed Canadian farmers held 12.3 million cattle and calves on their farms as of July 1, 2022, down 2.8% on the year. That is the lowest level recorded since July 1, 1988, and represents the largest year-over-year decrease since July 1, 2015, when record high prices incentivized farmers to sell their animals.
This time around, the decline in cattle numbers is due more to the drought, which tightened feedgrain supplies and led to record-high production costs in some cases. Rising export demand for beef and the resulting increase in slaughter also helped to lead to the drawdown in the Canadian cattle herd, StatsCan said.
Cattle and calf slaughter for the period from January to June 2022 was up 2.5% from the same period in 2021, and reached the highest level recorded for the first half of the year since 2010. Strong export demand for Canadian beef — particularly from the US and Japan — helped support domestic slaughter, as total exports of beef and veal for the January-to-June period rose in 2022, compared with the same period in 2021.
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