Current Cattle Market Daily Headlines for Tuesday October 27, 2020

Mackenzie Johnston

6 years ago

Farm, business groups warn Iowa voters of threat of Green New Deal

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau recently warned Iowa voters against the negative impacts of the Green New Deal.
According to Daniel Heady, the Iowa Farm Bureau’s national political adviser, the Green New Deal would result in massive taxation, an undermining of agricultural practices that help make farmers profitable. It would greatly impact the way agriculture producers operate.
Marty Durbin of the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute said that the Green New Deal will not only impact those in agriculture, but the general public. This government mandate will increase costs for household electricity, propane to heat homes, energy used in manufacturing and fuel.
- “The Green New Deal would be taking cheap energy and making it expensive while we should be taking expensive energy and making it cheap,” said Durbin.

According to R-CALF’s CEO, Bill Bullard, NCBA’s proposed voluntary plan to increase negotiated cash trade and create a robust market doesn’t restore the volume of the negotiated cash market to the minimal level the group’s economist, Steven Koontz, recommends to achieve robust competition.
- Bullard stated that the voluntary plan, titled the 75% Plan, defies logic and common sense because it sets a threshold for minimum purchases in the negotiated cash market at levels well below the average volume seen in that market over the past three years.
Steven Koontz’s research showed that 86,000 hd. of cattle needed to be purchased each week in a competitive cash market to achieve robust competition.
- Nonetheless, NCBA’s 75% Plan only requires the largest beef packers to purchase 75 percent of that minimum number, which equates to 64,500 hd. of cattle during some of the weeks of the year, but not all weeks.
  - According to the USDA, the national weekly volume in both the negotiated cash market and the negotiated grid market from October 2017 through October 2020 averaged over 117,000 hd./week.
- Bullard said these numbers show that NCBA’s plan will allow the packers to purchase far fewer cattle in the cash market than what was purchased on average during the past three years- a time when cattle producers suffered significant losses because of a lack of competition in the cattle market.

California’s wildfires have spread across more than 4 million acres in the state and cattle ranchers have been among the hardest hit within the agriculture industry.
Fires have torn through national forests used for grazing, destroying parts of the 38 million acres of rangeland, which is more than a third of the state, managed by ranchers.
For ranchers who depend on Forest Service permits to graze cattle, this has been the most catastrophic year they’ve ever seen.
Dave Daley of Butte County lost over 85 percent of his uninsured herd in the Bear fire.
- He continues to search everyday for survivors, but for the most part, he is picking through carcasses and euthanizing cattle too injured to survive.
- Going forward, he anticipates the winter to be difficult with showers causing mudslides. Additionally, he isn’t sure what the future holds for his government permit due to the fires.
- Daley blames the politics that govern national forests and inhibit public grazing, as well as prescribed burns. He refers to the forests as “tinderboxes.”