Industry Needs Action, Despite ‘No Nothing Burger’ Hearings
After a week filled with congressional hearings on the Cattle Market Price Discovery and Transparency Act including CEOs from “The Big Four,” Don Schiefelbein, president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) described it as “kind of a big no nothing burger.”
Despite a “no nothing burger” hearing, in a recent “AgriTalk” segment, Schiefelbein joined host Chip Flory to highlight where he feels the industry needs to see action.
Processing Capacity
Cattle capacity and hook space, as well as lifting regulations and the burden of getting a packing plant up and running are a priority to Schiefelbein. He believes this will be valuable to ranchers in regaining leverage.
Cattle Contract Library
Starting as a pilot project, “How we construct [the library] determines whether or not we're going to be truly successful,” Schiefelbein said. He appreciates the fact the library can be tweaked or changed as needed in its early stages.
Transparency is also important to Schiefelbein regarding the library. He hopes it will be effective in helping producers and not just be a tool to help the packer.
Packers may be able to decipher their contracts from their competitors, which Schiefelbein describes as a concern. This project, originally designed to help the producer, might end up being more beneficial to the packer.
Livestock Mandatory Reporting
Oversight on Livestock Mandatory Reporting is extremely important to Schiefelbein, ensuring it gets renewed and reauthorized.
Department of Justice (DOJ)
There needs to be some results from the DOJ about where they are on their investigation, Schiefelbein believes. The JBS settlement from earlier this year had Schiefelbein saying, “It's hard for a rancher to accept that somebody would settle for tens of millions of dollars and not have wrongdoing.”
Alternative Marketing Agreements (AMA) and Cash Trade
The Cattle Market Price Discovery and Transparency Act is not set out to kill AMAs, Flory said. “We just need more transparency. We need more on-the-ground price discovery happening in that southern market in particular.”
“We want more cash trade,” Schiefelbein explained. “We just want it in the hands of producers to control it.”
In addition, he’s concerned about how a mandatory level of trade could affect producers in AMAs. In an area where cash trade needs to be increased to meet the minimum level, will the larger or smaller producers lose their agreements?
The implementation and unintended consequences of government involvement concerns Schiefelbein. “Those of us who lived when the government got into the dairy buy-out in our marketing world … remember quite well it was not intended to be that way, but the impact was absolutely devastating,” Sciefelbein said.
He also brought up the old quote from former president Reagan saying whenever the government comes to your place and says ‘I’m from the government, I’m here to help.’ Maybe you better close the door.
Listen to the full “AgriTalk” interview with NCBA’s Don Schiefelbein here.
