Cattle Industry Updates as of August 4th, 2020

The webinar starts off with Jeff Stolle, Nebraska Cattlemen market reporting service, giving a market overview going on 150 days from when COVID-19 started to affect our marketplace. Jeff goes through charts of the Nebraska weekly average for dressed steers, USDA choice boxed beef, USDA choice/select spread, USDA cattle on feed: 7 sates – 1,000+ capacity, USDA weekly steer carcass weight and more.

Ashley Kohls, Director of Government Affairs at Nebraska Cattlemen, gives a recap of some of the NCBA Summer Business meeting that was held in Denver last week (21 min 21 seconds). Something NC gets asked frequently is our organizations stance on the Live Cattle Marketing committee meeting. Do we consider it a win, lose or draw? Allison VanDerWal, Executive Director at MN State Cattlemen Association, gives an update on the remaining committee meetings from NCBA summer business meeting. (34 minutes 40 seconds) Find out more as Ashley and Allison dig deeper into policy and the happenings of the meeting.
Nikki Whitaker, Membership Coordinator at Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association, gives a USDA CFAP Program update (42 minutes 50 seconds). Everyone received their 80% and FSA Administrator Fordyce did say during the NCBA summer meeting that the extra 20% is likely. CFAP payments are slowing thus far there has been $6.8 billion or 43% paid so far. Iowa takes the cake thus far on livestock payments of $344,xxx,xxx.xx through the CFAP program.
Jessica Herrmann, VP of Legal & Government Affairs at Nebraska Cattlemen, talks about the two current bills in congress for the fourth round of COVID funding (49 minutes 46 seconds). Jessie goes over the HEROES Act that was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives giving $16.5 billion in direct prescriptive support and $33 billion indirectly when considering other ag relief and conservation efforts in the package. The HEALS act that was passed in the U.S. Senate gave $20 billion in direct aid to livestock producers at the discretion of USDA.