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Update on proposed Cattle Contract Library pilot program

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has proposed plans to shift how it populates data for the Cattle Contracts Library (CCL) pilot program.

Ethan Lane with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says the intention to move toward a more mandatory structure came as a surprise. “They had been working on kind of a voluntary basis asking producers to participate,” he says.  “What they’ve found is they feel they need more information to populate the library.  We appreciate them looking for ways to make this a viable product, but we are concerned about the idea of them going too far down this road.”

He tells Brownfield there is still a lot of work to be done before the pilot program can get off the ground.  “Now that they’ve announced the direction, we need to start working on what it might look like to secure that kind of data reporting on a regular basis,” he says.  “About the number of transactions, the types of transactions that have been exercised against those contracts on a weekly basis.”

The Cattle Contracts Library is designed to be a tool for cattle producers to help them capture unrealized value for the livestock.  Lane says NCBA will continue to work with AMS to ensure the success of the tool while protecting members’ proprietary business information.