28 Nebraska Cattleman August 2023 Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program Funding Will End if Continued Support Is Not Allocated By Tressa Lawrence, Contributing Writer What Is the Pilot Program? Under the ruling of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) created a Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program that went into effect on Jan. 6, 2023. The purpose of the Cattle Contracts Library is to increase market transparency, improve price discovery and give insight into supply and demand indicators for cattle producers across the country. The program requires packers that have slaughtered during the previous five calendar years, with an average of (and not less than) 5 percent of the number of fed cattle slaughtered nationally, to provide contract information for cattle they purchase, including estimated and actual cattle purchases under active contracts. What This Means AMS will collect data on a national level, focusing on base price sources and adjustments, contract specifications, volume, discounts, as well as premiums. This information is collected confidentially, and the aggregated data will be presented via a dashboard or Excel spreadsheet on the USDA’s Cattle Contracts Library Summary page. When viewing the data, keep in mind that the averages in this data are not weighted, meaning that each contract is given equal importance to the data, regardless of the number of cattle within each contract. “The data that is represented there is a simple average of all of the contracts,” explains Jeff Stolle, vice president of marketing for Nebraska Cattlemen. “For example, if there was a contract in there upon which 40,000 head of volume was transacted in the previous month and another contract in there upon which 40 head of volume was transacted in the previous month, using a simple average, both of those contracts would have exactly the same influence on the average.” How We Got Here In April 2022, AMS hosted the first of their listening sessions where stakeholders had the opportunity to voice their questions or concerns, as well as desired outcomes, in regard to the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program. AMS used feedback from these sessions to help develop a model that focuses on content and usage. The listening sessions are still taking place regularly, with the schedule listed online for inperson events, as well as information to listen via Zoom. “We are pleased that USDA listened to feedback from stakeholders like National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) while crafting the final rule on the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program. We are hopeful that this pilot program will strike an appropriate balance between offering cattle producers additional insight into the market while also protecting their proprietary business information,” said NCBA Senior Director of Government Affairs Tanner Beymer in a statement released by National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “A Cattle Contracts Library is just one of many tools NCBA has advocated for to help producers make informed business decisions and capture the most value possible for their cattle.” The continued feedback from these listening sessions is helping to develop a more useable, understandable data dashboard that stakeholders can utilize. The Future of the Library During a recent listening session hosted in Lincoln, Michael Sheats, USDA director of agriculture analytics division, explained that funding of the pilot library lasts through the end of the government's fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Without funding, there will be no authority to continue with the program. Speculation has been made that future funding could be included in the next Farm Bill, which will hopefully be pushed through by the end of the fiscal year, but there is no confirmation of that. Current listening sessions are seeking to find out what producers think of the program and if they find value in the data produced. Sheats said that feedback from these listening sessions will be put into a report to direct future action taken regarding the program. To join the upcoming listening sessions and give your feedback on usability and whether you think the program should continue, visit the AMS Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program webpage at https://www.ams.usda.gov/ market-news/livestock-poultry-grain/ cattle-contracts-library. You can also find recordings from previous listening sessions there. To find the library database, go to https://mymarketnews.ams. usda.gov/Cattle_Contract_Library. NC
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