R-CALF Farm Bill Priorities

The farm bill is currently in the Senate and has a lot of encouragement from several agricultural groups to get it pushed through. R-CALF United Stock Growers of America CEO Bill Bullard has several measures that the organization wants to see in a farm bill, including addressing an egregious cattle procurement tool that needs revision

“Formula contract, in which they are allowed to ship large volumes of cattle out of our competitive price discovery market, place them in forward type contracts, but never agree on a price, and the price is determined after the cattle are delivered in the future, and it's linked directly back to this cash market that they have just removed the cattle from, so if they, they are then incentivized to lower the cash market price, because doing so lowers the price of 100% of the cattle that they procure. We want the Senate in the farm bill to prohibit those type of unpriced formula contract that gives the meat packers undue leverage over the price of cattle.”

In addition, Bullard states that R-CALF USA is advocating for mandatory country of origin labeling to be included in the farm bill, as well as ending or reforming the beef checkoff in order to ensure transparency and accountability, so as not to have outside influences on public policy.