Farm Bureau releases livestock market analysis
According to the Hagstrom Report, July 2024 marks the first time since 2016 that USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service has not published its July Cattle Inventory report. As a result, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Market Intel service released an analysis that it said used data from several USDA reports to assemble the market outlook for animal proteins for the second half of 2024.
According to the analysis, “The 2024 cattle inventory is the lowest it has been since 1951, which has sent beef prices soaring. The hog industry is looking profitable, too, but has a lot of ground to make up for with last year’s losses as well as supply chain complications caused by California’s Proposition 12.” Meanwhile, poultry including eggs, broilers and turkeys continue to contend with the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).
USDA announces additional RAPP funding to expand, diversify export markets
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that an additional $300 million will be available through the Regional Agricultural Promotion Program (RAPP) to help grow export markets for American farm and food products around the world.
“Access to international markets supports U.S. farmers at home and food security throughout the world … USDA launched RAPP last year as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to create more, new and better markets for U.S. producers and agribusinesses, and we’ve seen tremendous interest, culminating in more than a billion dollars in proposals for the first $300 million round of RAPP funding earlier this year. Given the importance of exports in supporting farm income and rural economic development, we’re delighted to be able to make an additional $300 million available this year” said Deputy Secretary Torres Small.
Secretary Vilsack announced in October 2023 that USDA would use $1.2 billion from the Commodity Credit Corporation to establish RAPP to help U.S. exporters expand their customer base beyond established markets such as China, Mexico and Canada, which collectively account for nearly half of all current export sales. In May, USDA allocated the first $300 million in RAPP funding to 66 U.S. organizations to implement hundreds of market development projects focusing on a wide range of products and markets.
USDA published a Notice of Funding Opportunity and interested organizations must apply by Oct. 4. USDA anticipates that allocations will be announced before the end of the calendar year. As with the first round of RAPP funding, USDA is again setting aside $25 million specifically for activities in Africa, which has the some of the fastest-growing economies but the lowest levels of U.S. export market investment of any region in the world.
Food, ag subjects at meeting on unfair, illegal pricing
According to the Hagstrom Report, when the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission virtually cohosted the first public meeting of the Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing to discuss enforcement actions taken to lower prices for American consumers, agriculture and food came up several times.
According to a Justice Department news release, FTC Chair Lina Khan announced that she will ask the commission “to launch an inquiry into grocery prices in order to probe the tactics that big grocery chains use to hike prices and extract profits from everyday Americans at the checkout counter.”
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter highlighted the actions Antitrust Division staff are taking to enforce the law and lower prices in vital industries including food and agriculture.
Agriculture Deputy Secretary Torres Small “highlighted the all-of-USDA approach to tackling food and agricultural pricing challenges for farmers and consumers alike, including an ongoing investigative study on retail concentration and market practices as well as landmark efforts to modernize the Packers & Stockyards Act rulebook and build a competition partnership with state attorneys general.”
According to Tri-State Livestock News, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is working on a program to track animals from birth to slaughter.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its long-awaited update to the animal identification rules on Friday, April 26, 2024.
The June statement runs counter to the April plan, which calls for electronic identification in place of the silver metal “bangs” tag on sexually intact cattle (18 months or older) and/or bison that move across state lines. USDA estimates this includes about 11 percent of the US beef cow herd and bison herd.
The June post to their website reads:
A comprehensive animal disease traceability system is our best protection against a devastating disease outbreak. USDA is committed to implementing a modern system that tracks animals from birth to slaughter using affordable technology that allows for quick tracing of sick and exposed animals to stop disease spread. In September 2018, USDA established four overarching goals to increase traceability:
1. Advance the electronic sharing of data among Federal and State animal health officials, veterinarians, and industry, including sharing basic animal disease traceability data with the Federal animal health events repository;
2. Use electronic identification tags for animals requiring individual identification in order to make the transmission of data more efficient;
3. Enhance the ability to track animals from birth to slaughter through a system that allows tracking data points to be connected; and
4. Elevate the discussion with States and industry to work toward a system where animal health certificates are electronically transmitted from private veterinarians to State animal health officials.
In an April news release, USDA said:
One of the most significant benefits of the rule for farmers and ranchers will be the enhanced ability of the United States to limit impacts of animal disease outbreaks to certain regions, which is the key to maintaining our foreign markets. By being able to readily prove disease-free status in non-affected regions of the United States, we will be able to request foreign trading partners recognize disease-free regions or zones instead of cutting off trade for the entire country. Traceability of animals is necessary to establish these disease-free zones and facilitate reestablishment of foreign and domestic market access with minimum delay in the wake of an animal disease event.
Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, a Republican who is carrying a bill to defund the electronic ID program to prevent USDA from implementing it, said that by USDA’s own figures, which she does not necessarily trust, a birth to slaughter tracking program would cost at least $250 million.
Hageman said that, although USDA predicts that their current official plan of requiring electronic identification of all 18 months and older sexually intact cattle and bison that cross state lines will cost $26 million, the appropriations bill only includes $15 million to implement it.
“I guarantee most of that will go to expanding USDA APHIS in Washington, and not to our producers,” she said. “And if it does go to the producers, it will go to the politically connected ones, not the little guy.”
Hageman said the current system works for cattle traceability and the proposed electronic ID mandate is unnecessarily expensive and intrusive.
Dr. Michael Watson, APHIS Administrator commented that “rapid traceability in a disease outbreak will not only limit how long farms are quarantined, keep more animals from getting sick, and help ranchers and farmers get back to selling their products more quickly – but will help keep our markets open.”
But Hageman reiterated that “this is a solution in search of a problem” as “disease outbreaks in the U.S. are very rare.”
“They try to act as if this is about disease traceability. You don’t have disease traceability if you are tracking 11 percent. It’s incrementalism,” according to Hageman as she added that “all you have to do is look at Denmark and Ireland. Denmark was the first country to do full mandatory ID. They just imposed a $100 per had tax on cattle producers. Without being able to trace each head of cattle, they wouldn’t be able to impose those kinds of restrictions on people.” She also pointed out that “in early 2022, Ireland adopted an EID mandate and by August of 2023 they issued an order to slaughter 41,000 head of cattle. Not because of a disease outbreak, but because of global warming.”
Hageman said the three industries currently under scrutiny for climate change are energy, travel and cattle. She believes that the next step will be BQA and that one won’t be able to sell if they are not BQA certified, claiming that’s how they put producers out of business, reduce meat production, and get cattle off of federal lands.
She said she can foresee adopting a rule that if you don’t comply with BQA, you can’t get a grazing permit, as well as a potential methane tax in the future, claiming this is all about “controlling our food supply and food chain” as “more and unneeded regulations will lead to more beef imports” as mandates like electronic ID can put U.S. producers at a disadvantage against imported beef that doesn’t have such requirements.
United States Cattlemen’s Association and R-CALF USA support Hageman’s efforts to halt USDA’s implementation of the electronic identification mandate, while in February, the NCBA Cattle Health and Wellbeing Committee adopted a policy to support the current USDA rule to require electronic identification of 18 month and older sexually intact cattle moving across state lines.
Additionally, NCBA “will provide outreach and education to members following anticipated publication of USDA’s final rule requiring EID devices” and “will support a private, industry managed, non-government Independent Database Collaborator (IDC) to serve as a hub for critical data and coordination.”
0 Comments