Bringing Feed Efficiency Technologies to the Beef Industry: Challenges and Opportunities

While beef production continues to be the largest agricultural enterprise in the U.S. (20.5% of total farm cash receipts in 2006; ERS, 2008), rising feed costs, global competition, and societal concerns about food safety, energy policy and the environment have created new economic challenges for the industry. Productivity of the U.S. cattle industry has improved substantially over the last 50 years, with beef production per total inventory increasing from 137 pounds in 1955 to over 250 pounds in recent years (Elam and Preston, 2004). Most of these productivity gains were realized through use of grain-fed beef production systems, adoption of nutrition, reproductive and pharmaceutical (e.g., ionophores) based technologies, and the application of crossbreeding systems and selection programs that focused on output traits. It is remarkable that these beef productivity gains were achieved in the absence of direct selection to improve feed efficiency. In fact, there is little evidence that genetic merit for feed efficiency or maintenance energy requirements in beef cattle has improved in the past 50 years (Archer et al., 1999, Johnson et al. 2003).