The Colombian Cattle Cycle, 1954–2024: Persistence, Structural Change, and External Shocks

Classical cattle-cycle theory was developed primarily for temperate capital-intensive livestock systems, leaving its applicability to tropical extensive production less well established. Using Colombian monthly bovine slaughter data for 1954–2024 and a census-anchored herd reconstruction for 2008–2022, this study examines cyclical persistence, structural change, price relationships, and selected external indicators through complementary time-series and state-space methods. Spectral evidence is multimodal, with concentrations around 4.4–5.0 and 7.1–7.8 years. The reference turning-point procedure yields an average cycle duration of approximately 6.1 years, although estimates increase under more restrictive dating rules. Structural-break tests strongly reject parameter stability; a seven-break segmentation is retained under the reference specification and major-gap exclusion checks, although several dates are specification-sensitive. Conventional system-wide Granger tests identify predictive associations within the multivariate system, but pairwise Toda–Yamamoto tests do not establish robust short-run price–slaughter predictability. The selected ENSO, monetary policy, and real-exchange-rate indicators provide no robust incremental predictive content under the specifications examined. Retrospective state-space smoothing identifies a herd contraction of 4.3–5.2 million head between 2010 and 2014, depending on the replacement specification, followed by recovery through 2022. The evidence is consistent with retention–liquidation dynamics while distinguishing long-run slaughter-cycle evidence from the shorter reconstructed inventory record.