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AMS unveils interactive live‑cattle dashboard with new premiums-and-discounts data
Summary
Agricultural Marketing Service staff demonstrated a public dashboard built from Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR) data that adds a new premiums-and-discounts series, limits the interactive tool to five years of data for performance, and notes confidentiality gaps in some published series.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service on the agency’s public website demonstrated a new interactive live‑cattle dashboard that draws on regularly reported Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR) data and introduces a premiums‑and‑discounts data series collected on the 113 form.
Charlie Potts, a supervisor in AMS’s Kansas City office, led the demonstration and said the dashboard is designed for both novice users and advanced analysts. “We only hold five years worth of data in this dashboard,” Potts said, “just because of the sheer volume of data … so we cap that at five years.” The dashboard includes date-range controls, downloadable tables, a help overlay, and regional maps.
Why it matters: the dashboard centralizes transaction-level reporting by purchase type (formula, forward contract, negotiated grid, negotiated cash), provides live and dressed price series and volumes, and — for the first time in this interface — publishes premium and discount amounts broken out by yield, weight, quality and other categories. Potts said the new premiums-and-discounts data are collected on the agency’s 113 form and were first published via the dashboard about two months ago. “This is information that is collected on the 113 form that captures all your cattle premiums and discounts on actual cattle transactions,” he said.
What the dashboard shows: the landing page offers quick price-and-volume snapshots and links to deeper pages. The general-price page displays weekly head counts and weighted-average prices by purchase type. A comprehensive fed-cattle page — fed by the agency’s weekly national fed‑cattle report — breaks out delivery windows (1–14 days versus 15–30 days) and shows comprehensive prices on a dressed basis for those windows. Potts highlighted example values from the demo, including headline weekly volumes and purchase‑type weighted averages for specific weeks.
Premiums and discounts: a new section presents heat maps and time series for yield, weight, quality and other premiums/discounts by region. Potts showed regional patterns — for example, larger yield premiums in the Southern Plains and higher quality premiums in northern regions — and time-series examples, including Nebraska and the Texas Panhandle. He also demonstrated a net‑versus‑base comparison that shows how premiums and discounts change a transaction’s base price to a final net price (one demo point cited a 99¢ dressed premium on a formula net for a specified week).
Net price distribution and grading: an additional net-price distribution report breaks transactions into $2 increments so users can see where the bulk and premium tails of trade fall, rather than relying solely on high/low/weighted averages. The dashboard also provides percent‑Choice grading bands in 5‑percentage‑point groups to help sellers estimate the dollar value of marginal grade improvements.
Data limits and confidentiality: Potts said some data are intentionally withheld to protect producer confidentiality. “We couldn’t print this information due to confidentiality,” he said, explaining a gap in one series where data between April 7 and June 16 were not displayed. He emphasized that the dashboard contains only transactions that fall under the LMR threshold and that some state/region/class combinations will be blank either because of confidentiality masking or because no data exist.
Availability and next steps: Jason Carwell, acting director for specialty market news in AMS, told attendees the dashboard is available on the AMS website and that the team is working to move from weekly to daily updates when feasible. He said historical data beyond the five‑year dashboard cap remain available through the agency’s broader data portal for users who need longer series. Carwell also said presenters will take questions during a follow-up question forum and offered follow-up via email or scheduled calls for users who want a deeper walkthrough or to download broader historical datasets.
The agency did not take any formal votes or adopt policy during the demonstration; staff limited the session to a product walkthrough and logistics for follow-up support.
