R-CALF USA; Farm Bill Proposals Need More Work

Even though the House and Senate have provided a set of frameworks each for the Farm Bill, our R-CALFUnited stock Growers of America CEO, Bill Bullard says there is still a lot of work to be done.

“And that’s because it does not yet include the reforms that are needed to correct the structural deficiencies in our US cattle market. There is no mention of a mandatory country-of-origin labeling program. There's no mention of forcing the concentrated meat packers to compete in the marketplace by banning some of the non competitive pipe forward contracts that are not negotiated at all between the packer and producer.”

In addition, Bullard says there is no discussion of reform in the new farm bill proposals for the Beef Checkoff, which he says is not utilized and producer dollars the way they should to fight the very reforms that our calf feels are needed to make changes in the cattle industry.

“We're very disappointed that Congress will not touch on the most important aspects of our industry. At the same time, we've got census data showing we've lost another 100 to 7000 independent cattle producers from this industry just in the last five years. That's a clear signal that what we're doing is not working and what we're doing is causing the contraction of our cattle industry the single largest segment of American agriculture.

R-CALF USA CEO, Bill Bullard.