Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is back visiting with the Chair of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s Live Cattle Marketing Committee, Troy Sander, talking about some of the cattle marketing issues which will be discussed this week in New Orleans at the Cattle Industry Convention and NCBA Trade Show.
The 2023 Cattle Industry Convention coverage is being powered by Performance Ranch, a part of Zoetis, and by Farm Data Services located in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
One topic of interest during the convention, Sander said, will be the live cattle contracts that are now being pulled together by the USDA.
“We have policy on our books from NCBA that says we support a cattle contract library,” Sander said. “I think the challenge going forward is going to be having something that is aggregate enough that doesn’t violate confidentiality. Also, specific enough that it actually makes sense, and it isn’t just the big book full of pages that you can’t discern anything from.”
NCBA is also pushing to see a reauthorization of Livestock Mandatory Reporting.
“I could really see us putting together- as we did back in 2014- seeing us putting together some sort of a working group that would maybe look at reporting regions if you will, look at the forward contract type negotiations if you will, and what buckets they fall in, whether it is zero to seven, 14 to 21 day,” Sander said.
When it comes to reporting, Sander said one of the most important factors is collecting and submitting that data in the way it was originally intended.
Sander was part of the price discovery task force put together a couple of years ago in Denver and said many good things have come out of that task force, including the ability to communicate better across the cattle industry.
“The one thing that came out of our Denver meeting is we put together these large working groups with representatives of all across the association, and we began talking to each other,” Sander said. “When you see the perspective of the person that maybe you hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to, it really helps you become more open-minded, and find solutions that benefit everyone.”
The industry will not always agree on everything, Sanders said, but different regions are becoming better at understanding one another.
“I think those differences between feeding in the North and the South if you will, are getting closer and closer all the time in that we are changing genetics across this cowherd, if you will, so there is not as big of a genetic difference,” Sanders said.
Marketing opportunities are different depending on the region, Sander said, but with some of the proposed packing plant expansions, additions, and more, he sees that disparity shrinking.
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