News

GAO report determines no market manipulation

A Government Accountability Office report says cattle price fluctuations in recent years were caused by normal supply and demand factors, not manipulation.  The report was requested by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) when cattle feeders expressed concern about a 15 percent cattle price drop in late 2015.  Grassley says the report indicates that packer concentration did not influence prices to a great extent, although it found areas with limited packer options had cattle nine percent lower than areas with more competition.

“I think in our free market system of economics that’s probably reasonable that when you have less competition you have lower prices for what the farmers sell,” Grassley told farm reporters.

R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard tells Brownfield the report failed to mention “the elephant in the room.”

“We saw a huge import surge in 2015, in fact, in a two-year period, we saw imports increase 27 percent,” Bullard told Brownfield Ag News Wednesday.  “That had a tremendous downward pressure on the marketplace, and the report ignored that.”

The report recommends more cattle price data sharing between the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service and the agency’s Packers and Stockyards Program.

AUDIO: Bill Bullard (3 min. MP3)