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USDA rolls out Cattle Contract Library

The USDA has launched its Cattle Contract Library.  

Tanner Beymer with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says it has the potential to be a great resource for producers.  But it is a pilot program.  “A pilot program is designed to poke holes in,” he says.  “It’s designed to evaluate in a way that people intended for it to function.”

He tells Brownfield over the course of the next few months NCBA and its members will closely review the program, making sure confidentiality is protected and ensuring the program provides useful information to producers.  “What makes the library unique is that it takes all these different data points and all these different reports and put it into one location,” he says.  “We will definitely need to have conversations with actual cattle producers to see just how well that is working.”

AUDIO: Tanner Beymer, NCBA

Taylor Cox is the Associate Deputy Administrator with the Agricultural Marketing Service.  “They will update it, there will be expanded versions,” he says.  “We’ll do everything that we were tasked with doing in that act.  Then it will be up to the lawmakers to decide if it was informative, if it was a useful tool, should they continue it.”

The USDA says the initial release of the library will allow users to browse the information contained in active contracts used for the purchase of fed cattle. 

Cox says enhancements will also be made to the library in the coming months.

Packers that slaughtered an average of not less than five percent of the number of fed cattle slaughtered nationally during the immediately preceding five calendar years were required to submit this information to AMS, as outlined in a final rule published Dec. 7, 2022, and that became effective on Jan. 6, 2023.  MS will conduct a series of meetings and webinars in the coming weeks and months to help stakeholders understand how to use the pilot library. The first webinar is scheduled for February 8, 2023, at 11:00 a.m. ET. Details on that webinar, and all other information related to the pilot, can be found HERE.