New insurance options, emergency grazing authorities on Grassland Conservation Reserve Program acres, and guaranteed loans for regional meat processors are among the elements of a package unveiled by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins Monday to encourage producers to rebuild the U.S. cattle herd. 

In a press release, Rollins announced the Ranchers First Initiative, designed to give the rebuilding a jump-start. It includes a new Beef Retention and National Development endorsement allowing producers to insure “the economic value of breeding over a two-year period” under the agency’s Livestock Risk Protection Insurance Program, which protects livestock from declining market prices.

It also includes changes to the Emergency Conservation Program that will allow producers to use the program on Grassland Conservation Reserve Program Acres following wildfire and other natural disasters. The changes come after Congress passed legislation expediting ECP payments to producers hit by wildfires earlier this year, which became law on July 12 after President Donald Trump did not sign or veto it within 10 days of receiving it. 

The plan also includes the creation of a guaranteed loan option under the agency’s Strengthening Processing for U.S. Ranchers Program, which uses Commodity Credit Corporation funding to pay small and mid-sized beef processors for higher costs they face acquiring cattle due to inventory shortages and other market conditions. The program, which also offers grants, was first announced by Rollins earlier this month.

Under the plan, USDA leaders also plan to “prioritize federal procurement of locally processed American beef by encouraging purchasing across federal and state institutions — including prisons, hospitals, and related facilities,” according to the release. Additionally, the agency is launching an initiative focused on beginning and veteran farmers and ranchers, which will coordinate services with the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments. 

Absent from the plan was any mention of changes to federal meat processing regulations for individual producers, despite Trump’s Truth Social post last week stating that he was “authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow Farmers and Ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD.” 

In a press release, R-Calf USA CEO Bill Bullard called the initiatives "important steps toward reinforcing an ailing cattle industry against the policy‑driven forces that suppress marketplace competition, enable foreign capture of domestic supply chains, and erode market transparency—pressures that collectively undermine the confidence and long‑term viability of American ranchers."

However, he also said that the actions "fall short of reversing the underlying policies that caused the serious and ongoing erosion of the U.S. cattle industry."

“We look forward to working with the Administration and Congress to reverse those policy-driven forces through such policy reforms as restoring mandatory country of origin labeling for beef, eliminating the beef packers’ anticompetitive buying practices, managing trade through effective import controls, and ending the massive beef checkoff program subsidy that perpetuates monopolistic control over America’s cattle industry," Bullard wrote.

Source - https://www.agri-pulse.com