Ranchers to hear about GIPSA regulations; no more dairy herd retirements

Ranchers to hear about GIPSA regulations; no more dairy herd retirements

Washington Ag Today November 1, 2010 USDA’s proposed new regulations under the Packers and Stockyards Act will be the focus of a round table discussion this Wednesday at the Spokane County/Washington State University Extension Center in Spokane. Tom Platt with WSU Extension says since the proposed regulations were announced the livestock industry has been in an uproar about whether they will actually help or hinder the fair marketing of livestock.

The roundtable on Wednesday, November 3rd begins at seven p.m. and will feature Bill Bullard of R-Calf USA by telephone explaining the group’s support of the proposed rule and then by telephone a spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association explaining the NCBA’s opposition. Ranchers will have an opportunity to ask questions of both speakers.

Members of Cooperatives Working Together, CWT, the dairy farmer-funded self-help program, have voted to focus the seven year-old program exclusively on building export markets after this year and will no longer fund any dairy herd retirement rounds.

Chris Galen of the National Milk Producers Federation, which manages CWT, says the herd retirement program was seeing diminishing returns.

Galen: “Because we had basically three herd retirements last year plus this one this summer we have reached a point where there is only so much more that we can do by removing cows. I think our members felt that going forward we really should focus on our export program. We think there is a strong economic bang for the buck by focusing on exports.”

Galen says that also means that starting in January the assessment on member’s milk volume will drop from ten cents a hundredweight to two cents.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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