The US Department of Agriculture will publish an additional regional report on negotiated cash cattle prices, combining sales data from Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced the change to the Agricultural Marketing Service's Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR) cash cattle reports on 20 October.
The new report starts with the afternoon reports of Monday, 26 October 2026. It will be built from data the LMR system already collects, so covered meatpackers will not have to report anything more.
The department's reason is the steady decline of negotiated cash trade. Cash purchases made up more than 50 percent of cattle transactions in 2005 but less than 18 percent in 2025, as packers moved towards formula-based buying. Because many formula prices are themselves based on cash prices, fewer cash sales mean fewer transactions to report, and confidentiality rules can then stop some figures being published, limiting the usefulness of the existing reports.
By pooling five states into one regional report, AMS expects to give producers, livestock sellers, packers and other buyers and sellers more meaningful information about negotiated cash cattle prices.
"Maintaining reliable and transparent price information is critical to a well-functioning cattle market," Rollins said, adding that the changes were meant to make the best possible use of the market information AMS gathers.
The department presented the update as part of its work on two executive orders signed by President Trump, on supporting American ranchers and on fair competition in livestock markets. Price reports such as these are what ranchers and feedlots use to judge whether the price a packer offers for finished cattle is in line with the market. The reports are published on the AMS livestock market news pages and in the USDA Market News app for iOS and Android.
Source: USDA
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