Farm Director, KC Sheperd, had the chance to catch up with the Livestock Marketing Association’s director of government and industry affairs, Luke Hale. Over 50 Livestock Marketing Association members and staff met with senators, U.S. representatives, congressional staffers, and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials Sept. 18-19, during the association’s 17th D.C. Fly-In. Hale talks to KC about highlights from the event.
LMA strictly represents stockyards, sales barns, and dealers, Hale said. Some of the services LMA provides include regulatory assistance for compliance as well as legislative and government affairs on matters regulated by the Packers and Stockyards Act.
“Livestock Marketing Association holds a D.C. member fly-in each year,” Hale said. “It is just a time for sale barn market owners and dealers to come up and visit with members of Congress about some of the issues they are dealing with, any changes we are working on for the Packers and Stockyards Act, and also meet with some agency officials that are in charge of regulatory oversight.”
LMA members from at least four to five different locations across the state of Oklahoma also attended the event, Hale said.
“The Oklahoma delegation, Congressmen and women, senators, are always great to meet with,” Hale said. “They had a very productive meeting. The main issue they were primarily discussing is moving back a regulation that prevented market owners from being able to invest in packing facilities. It is a regulation that was born out of the times of terminal stockyards when they were co-located with those packers, and there was kind of a necessary separation that needed to be in place.
Now, Hale said markets have changed significantly, becoming more oriented toward small businesses, Hale said, and the creation and adoption of the competitive auction market has brought forth the need for separation.
“Members from Oklahoma and Livestock Marketing Association’s staff have been working with congressional members to get some text out there in the House and Senate, and move forward with the Farm Bill,” Hale said.
Additionally, Hale said they are working on some adjustments to the Packers and Stockyards Act that would modernize and allow for more efficient and safe payments if auctions would like to do so. One example of a safer payment, he added, is wire transfer.
“Under the law, markets and dealers are required to pay within a certain amount of time, and it has become very difficult given that the law was written in a time before ACH and wire were around,” Hale said.
Work is also being done to obtain funding through appropriations for electronic identification tags.
“There is a rule coming down from USDA that is looking to shift that direction, so market owners don’t directly have to bore that expense, but obviously markets and dealers are dependent on their producers and their profitability and success, so being able to ensure that added expense of electronic ID doesn’t get passed down to them…,” Hale said.
