The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will host a series of cattle industry listening sessions in the coming months to gather stakeholder feedback on the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program (Pilot). These new sessions will be held at locations in key cattle producing states and will provide an opportunity for interested stakeholders to attend either in-person or virtually.

This new series of listening sessions beginning May 18, 2023, are a continuation of AMS’ outreach efforts and will provide an additional opportunity for industry stakeholders to share their feedback regarding the Pilot.

During these sessions, AMS will provide an overview of the current Pilot and then participants will be given an opportunity to share their feedback. In addition, AMS will accept written comments about the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot through Sept. 30, 2023. Written feedback can be submitted to Wash.LPGMN@usda.gov. All written feedback and a recording of each listening session will be posted on the AMS website.

The first listening session will be held at 4 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, May 18, 2023, at the USDA Cattle & Carcass Training Center located on the campus of West Texas A&M University at 2513-2579 4th Ave, Canyon, TX 79016.

Attendees at this Texas session may participate in person (seating limited to 80) or virtually. For virtual attendees, the meeting will be broadcast live as a webinar. Instructions for how to join virtually are available on the AMS Cattle Contracts Library Pilot page on the AMS website.  The event will start promptly at 4 p.m. Central Time. Registration is not required. Attendees will be permitted to submit Q&A via Zoom meeting. The event will be recorded to be posted later on the AMS website.

The second listening session will be held at 1 p.m. Central Time on Friday, June 16, 2023, at the USDA Cattle & Carcass Training Center located on the campus of University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Loeffel Meat Science Laboratory, Lincoln, NE 68583.

Attendees at this Nebraska session may participate in person (seating limited to 100) or virtually. For virtual attendees, the meeting will be broadcast live as a webinar. The event will start promptly at 1 p.m. Central Time. Registration is not required. Attendees will be permitted to submit Q&A via Zoom meeting. The event will be recorded to be posted later on the AMS website.

Details on future listening sessions will be announced when scheduled. For additional information, contact Michael Sheats, livestock, poultry, and grain market news director, at 202-690-3145.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (Pub. L. 117-103, March 15, 2022) directed AMS to establish a Cattle Contracts Library pilot program to increase market transparency for cattle producers. The library provides transparency into both commonalities and key differences in contracts, as well as the context for those terms through the provision of relevant volume numbers. The Final Rule implementing the Pilot was published in the Federal Register on Dec. 7, 2022, with an effective date on Jan. 6, 2023.  The Pilot became publicly accessible on Jan. 31, 2023.

In the development of the Pilot, AMS held nearly 50 outreach sessions with cattle industry stakeholders in which feedback was gathered and, when possible, incorporated into the Pilot’s design.  Since the public launch of the Pilot, AMS has continued its outreach and feedback-gathering efforts through participation at industry conferences, training events, and direct outreach to industry members.

Source: USDA’s AMS