The 2024 Cattle Industry Summer Business Meeting took place in San Diego, California. Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, noticed some fresh faces this year in San Diego.
“One of the things that I’ve noticed here in San Diego as part of the summer business meetings, is we do have a lot of young faces, and they’re not just here observing. They are here engaging. They are here making policies for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. They’re making policies for ANCW. Then they’re also engaging with Cattlemen’s Beef Board, so that’s very, very promising. But we have to make sure that we’re doing our part as an association to keep that regulatory burden down so they can get in. There are tremendous barriers to entry in this industry, as we all know. When you look at the price of cattle today, which if you got cattle, is great if you’re trying to get them, that’s a little tough.”
There are things NCBA can do to help younger people get into the industry.
“But one area where NCBA can have a big influence is just making sure that the price of entry, because of government regulations, is as low as possible. And that is such a big focus of ours, not only the regulation part but also on taxes. For example, we’re going to be facing a significant tax increase here in the next year or year and a half, if we can’t maintain a lot of the tax incentives and tax decreases that were passed by the Trump administration. Things like the death tax, for example, are also going to make it harder to keep younger producers in place. So those are all things that are part of our calculation to do what we can to incentivize younger producers to come in and take on these roles. Because, as I said, we think the future is bright for this industry. But we also need the people to come in and help us make sure that we’re keeping land and grass cattle on that grass.”
Like every other segment in U.S. agriculture, the beef industry wants the certainty of a five-year farm bill.
“We need some certainty, not just in the cattle industry, but everybody in agriculture, we need some certainty on what the plan is going to be, and unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get it. Everybody’s in the full-fledged campaign season, so we don’t expect a whole lot more out of Congress, and we need them to get to work on a whole host of issues, especially pushing back on some of the rules and regulations we’re seeing out of this administration. We just had the new Packers and Stockyards proposal that basically would take a producer’s ability to differentiate their product, to brand or market their product how they want to and make that against the rules.”