On January 8, Cargill Cattle Feeders LLC completed the sale of its Lockney, Texas, feed yard to Lofton Trust, a family-owned cattle operation based in California. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The feed yard, located in the Texas Panhandle near Plainview, opened in 1970 and was purchased by Cargill in 1986. It currently has capacity for 60,000 cattle and employs approximately 20 people.
In 2013, Cargill announced the future closure of Lockney, related to the shutdown of the company's Plainview, Texas, beef processing facility on February 1 of that year. The processing plant closed primarily due to drought that had severely limited the region's cattle supplies where four major beef processing facilities were operating. With a large feed yard at Bovina, Texas, in close proximity to Cargill's Friona, Texas, beef processing plant, and a constrained cattle supply throughout the Panhandle region, Lockney was deemed surplus.