At the Cattle Industry Summer Business meeting in San Diego, California, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays had the chance to talk with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association CEO Colin Woodall. One of his responsibilities is ensuring that young people have the opportunity to succeed in the beef cattle business. To read and listen to Hays’s earlier conversation with Woodall about the Beef Checkoff, click here.
Our coverage from the 2024 Cattle Industry Summer Business Meeting in San Diego is being powered by Farm Data Services of Stillwater.
One of the things that I’ve noticed here in San Diego at the Summer Business Meeting is that we do have a lot of young faces,” Woodall said. “And they are not just here observing. They are here to engage and they are here making policies for the National Cattleman’s Beef Association and ANCW, and they are also engaging with the Cattleman’s Beef Board, so that is very promising, but we have to make sure that we are doing our part as an association to keep that regulatory burden down so they can get in.”
Woodall acknowledged the barriers to entering the beef cattle industry not the least of which is the current prices of cattle and land. “One area where NCBA can have a big influence is making sure that price of entry, because of government regulations is as low as possible. That is a big focus of ours. Not only the regulation part, but also on taxes. For example, we are going to be facing a significant tax increase here in the next year, year and a half, if we can’t maintain the tax incentives and tax decreases that were passed by the Trump administration.”
Woodall admitted that like everyone else involved, the NCBA is frustrated with the slow progress of the Farm Bill and emphasized that everyone in agriculture needs the certainty that the Farm Bill would provide.
“Chairman Thompson did a tremendous job getting that bill out of the House Ag Committee, but unfortunately, that is where it sets,” Woodall said. “We are in a full-fledged campaign season, so we don’t expect a whole lot more out of Congress, yet, we need them to get to work on a whole host of issues especially pushing back on some of the rules and regulations that we are seeing out of this administration.”
He mentioned the recent Packers and Stockyards Proposal which would remove a producer’s ability to differentiate their product to brand and market it in a certain way needed to be pushed back.
He said that the Chevron Deference ruling would impact regulations like it in the future, as its existence has impacted them for the past forty years. “We are looking very carefully at what that decision means, not only for this particular proposal, but on things such as endangered species, waters of the United States, and all of the issues that we have been working on. This is an opening for us to get in there and be more successful in reining some of this over-regulation back,” he commented.
Today’s report is a part of an extensive discussion that Hays had with Woodall at the Summer Cattle Industry Summer Business meeting- click here to jump to the Ag Perspectives Podcast where you can listen to the entire conversation
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
