ABSTRACT
Livestock cycles are perhaps the most significant issue in the hog and cattle industries. The persistence and regularity of these cycles suggest – even to the casual observer – the existence of causes neither random nor totally exogenous. Rather than emphasizing understanding and planning, the livestock producer has been cajoled into exercising "self-constraint," a hopeless approach because many producers do not recognize complicity in perpetuating cycles. To them, cycles are caused by outside forces like the weather, the government, or imports. The chapter emphasizes their need to understand the several causes of livestock cycles and then to develop policies for minimizing the impact on individual operations and on the entire cattle and hog sectors. Sheep are excluded from the analysis because their numbers are proportionally so much smaller than the other two species. Cattle (and hog) cycles can be described as a combination of two stages: expansion and liquidation.
