USDA announced last week that AMS will start publishing a new negotiated cash cattle report on October 26 that combines Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. The report uses data packers already submit under Livestock Mandatory Reporting. This doesn’t change how cattle are bought and sold, but it does change how much of the Southern Plains fed cattle cash trade gets publicly reported, and lately that has not been much.
AMS can’t publish a report if it doesn’t meet the 3/70/20 confidentiality rule, which states a mandatory price report is only published if at least three companies regularly contribute data, no one company accounts for more than 70 percent of the volume, and no one company is the only reporter more than 20 percent of the time. Colorado has been in that situation for years, and this year it became a problem for other states. The Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexico weekly negotiated price has been withheld every week since early July, and Kansas has been withheld every week since late August. Kansas had not missed a week since at least 2019. Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexico’s last gap was seven weeks last winter, from early December through mid-January.
Table 1. Weeks the weekly negotiated cash report was withheld, by region and report year
| Withheld weeks | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
| TX-OK-NM | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 19 |
| Kansas | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| Nebraska | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Iowa-Minnesota | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Colorado | 27 | 36 | 52 | 53 | 52 | 42 |
The part that may surprise some is what this does to the 5-Area fed cattle average price that is widely used. The 5-Area average fed cattle price is not calculated from all five regions, regardless of what gets published. It is calculated from the regions that pass the confidentiality test. Since the August 24th report, the 5-Area head count has been only Nebraska plus Iowa/Minnesota. For two months now, Southern Plains cattle have had no direct weight on the benchmark 5-Area cattle price that anchors many formula trades and settles LRP fed cattle coverage.
In 2026, while the Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexico price was still being published, it averaged 9 cents per cwt above Nebraska and 23 cents above Iowa-Minnesota. But individual weeks ran $3 to $4 apart in either direction. In 5 of 19 weeks the gap was more than $2. Most weeks the gap was small, but some weeks it was not.
There are a few things to watch once the new report starts. The first is if the new five-state average price (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado) will regularly clear confidentiality every week. Second, will this change allow for trades in these states to be added into the 5-Area price. And third, will AMS be able to backfill and publish some history for the new price series, allowing some comparison of the new series with the 5 market average price.
Figure 1. Average weekly 5-Area negotiated cash head count by month: Nebraska and Iowa-Minnesota vs. Kansas and Texas-Oklahoma-New Mexico, January 2025 through October 19, 2026
Figure 2. Weekly difference between the Texas-Oklahoma-New Mexico and Nebraska Over 80% Choice live steer prices, 2026
Recommended citation format: Maples, Josh. “A New Cash Cattle Report for the Southern Plains.” Southern Ag Today 6(44.2). October 27, 2026. Permalink
