Ag Policy Blog

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., have announced the witnesses for the committee hearing Tuesday to review S. 4030, the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act of 2022 and the Meat and the Poultry Special Investigator Act of 2022.

The hearing will be livestreamed on the committee website.

Witness list

-Andy Green, senior adviser for fair and competitive markets, the Agriculture Department.

- Bruce Sommers, administrator, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.

- William Ruffin, Ruffin Farms, Bay Springs, Miss.

- Shawn Tiffany, president-elect, Kansas Livestock Association and Tiffany Cattle Company, Herington, Kan.

- Shelly Ziesch, owner/operator, Ziesch Ranch, Jamestown, N.D.

- Stephen Koontz, professor. agricultural and resource economics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.

Along with that, Texas A&M University's Agricultural and Food Policy Center (AFPC) has released an analysis of the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act. Boozman had asked AFPC economists to examine the act and its impact on the beef and cattle supply chains.

The bill would require packers responsible for more than 5% of fed cattle to buy a certain percentage of negotiated cash cattle rather than having all of their slaughter cattle under contract. The Secretary of Agriculture would establish up to seven regions of the country for cash cattle trade. The bill also establishes a contract library and mandates annual reporting of the cutout yield.

The bill would impact some regions of the country more than others based on data showing limited negotiated cash trade. The result, according to AFPC, would be an additional 2.3 million head of cattle would be sold through negotiated cash trade. Of that total, about 1.7 million would have to come from Texas-Oklahoma-New Mexico region, and nearly 312,000 would come out of Kansas, and more than 224,000 out of Nebraska. Iowa-Minnesota would see a small change in the increase of negotiated cash trade.

https://afpc.tamu.edu/…

You can follow the Senate hearing starting at 9 a.m. Central https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/…

The Senate hearing will be followed up Wednesday with a related hearing in the House Agriculture Committee that is expected to include the CEOs of Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS and National Beef Packing. That hearing on April 27 will also begin at 9 a.m. Central. https://www.youtube.com/…

More details on the hearings can be found here: https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN

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