Effects of production and marketing circumstances on economic values for beef production traits

The effect of altering production and marketing circumstances on economic values is quantified for a complete beef production system. Absolute and relative economic values were found to vary substantially with large, but realistic fluctuations in prices and costs. In addition, several examples of different management and different genotypes gave markedly different economic values than in the base situation. Also investigated were the effects of rescaling the enterprise to accommodate three alternative limitations; fixed feed available from pasture, fixed dollars available for feed or fixed amount of beef produced. The effects of rescaling were highly dependent on whether or not fixed costs were accounted for. When fixed costs were ignored (corresponding to a small positive profit) the economic value for mature size decreased while that for fertility increased, but other traits were largely unaffected by rescaling. Overall, production circumstances that reduced survival and fertility yielded the largest changes to economic values.