While Challenges Remain, Cattle Producers Have Much To Celebrate

During a recent mid-year cattle producer meeting, Skye Krebs, the vice president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said while many challenges still face the industry, it’s important to take a step back and celebrate recent victories for producers.

“We have got some wins here lately. A lot of positive things have happened for us," Krebs said. "To me, one of the main ones was the dietary guidelines and getting red meat at the top of that. We now got some common sense things that are good for the country. The tax bill, we've got [section] 179, [section] 199 where you can actually deduct some income. You can go out there and look at a new piece of machinery and get some tax incentives to do that with the bonus depreciation. A lot of that stuff is permanent. It's just not, you know, it's not going to expire. To me, one of the most exciting. Is the death tax. $30 million, again, permanent index for inflation, so it should keep creeping up as land values and everything else goes up. So those are some big wins that we've enjoyed here lately."

Cattle producers, Krebs noted, continue to face significant challenges that require immediate attention, including ongoing efforts across western states to improve predator management.

"We definitely got to get this federal protected predator issue under control, whether it be the grizzly bear, the gray wolf, the Mexican wolf," he stressed. "Here we're being asked to expand the herd, but in the meantime we got these federally protected species out there taking X amount. If they wanted to do something immediately, doing something with the federally protected predators would see an impact way sooner than some of these other things.”

One of the industry's biggest concerns remains the New World Screwworm. The continued closure of the U.S. border to Mexican cattle imports is straining U.S. infrastructure while Mexico strengthens its own.

“What are we going to do with the New World Screwworm? It's slowly creeping, creeping up. It's getting closer all the time," Krebs said. "You know, it was at 200 miles, 90 miles, we're getting an update now, 60 miles, 40 miles. We've got some new tools. There's some new drugs out there that they've got fast track. So we've got some different tools. You know, we need to do something. And we already see Florida put a ban on bringing in Texas cattle from those infected deals. So, in the meantime, we got to figure out an incremental plan to get this border opened back up because we're losing infrastructure, we're losing feedlots, we're losing packing capability. In the meantime, Mexico is picking that up so they're going to become true competitors. So we hope we can get a plan in place that can incrementally get it opened up and get back to trading cattle.”