For Immediate Release: June 26, 2024
Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com
Below please find an op-ed by R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard regarding the Nevil Speer Opinion: Speer: Protectionists Plagued By Wool Blindness, published June 5, 2024, in Drovers.
Coal Mine Canaries Served an Important Purpose
Op-ed by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA
In his June 5 opinion in Drovers, “Speer: Protectionists Plagued By Wool Blindness,” Nevil Speer objects to R-CALF USA’s characterization of the U.S. sheep industry as the cattle industry’s canary in the coal mine.
Populated with over a generation’s worth of annual data, R-CALF USA’s chart reveals that imports have supplanted domestic lamb and mutton production since the early ’90s; and U.S. consumers must now rely mostly on foreign imports to satisfy their appetite for lamb.
I stated that in 2022, about 74 percent of the lamb consumed in America was foreign and that excessive imports have decimated our domestic sheep industry.
I then presented a chart (column 4) showing that cattle and beef imports have more than doubled during the past four decades. Hence, I concluded the sheep industry is the cattle industry’s canary in the coal mine.
But Speer argues that isn’t so and only if my sheep chart had gone back farther in time could the truth be known. So, Speer constructed his own chart to disprove mine.
But his chart fails.
Speer’s chart doesn’t include consumption. Thus, it cannot identify when the market functioned properly – when domestic production was responsive to changes in domestic demand; nor, when market failure occurred – when imports relegated the domestic industry unresponsive to changes in consumer demand.
So, below I’ve added another decade of data to my chart to reinforce what is manifestly true.
The addition of 1970-1979 data reinforces the fact that the market functioned properly until the early ’90s as domestic production was clearly responsive to changes in domestic demand (rising and falling with consumption), and it did so even with directionless, year-to-year imports. But market failure occurred in the ’90s, when globalization caused policymakers to relax import restrictions for foreign meat, including our food safety standards and foreign meat plant inspection standards, and when the heretofore directionless imports had a decisive new direction – skyward!
Globalism’s free trade ushered in steadily rising imports (except during Australia’s drought) and those imports supplanted domestic production to an extent never before seen. Never has there been such a huge spread between domestic production and domestic consumption as there is today.
Speer’s omission of consumption data renders his chart and accompanying narrative meaningless to the discussion of whether the sheep industry has been decimated by imports. As demonstrated above, it most certainly has.
But Speer tries to ascribe other factors to the sheep industry’s decline: loss of the wool incentive program and not implementing a checkoff program until 2002.
But Speer again misses the forest for the trees. In our capitalistic economy, an industry experiencing significant demand growth for its products will increase the availability of those products to meet the new demand. And the sheep industry did just that, but not with domestic production. Instead, the industry met the growing demand with imports.
Why? Was it because exporting countries have a functioning wool incentive program or a longer serving checkoff?
Of course not. The answer is revealed below. Imported lamb enters the U.S. market at prices far too low to sustain our domestic sheep industry. If the U.S. wants a viable domestic sheep industry it must establish a meaningful tariff system to level the playing field for domestic sheep producers.
The failed free trade experiment decimated our commercial sheep industry. If we don’t begin regulating cheaper beef imports from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, and others, the decline in the number of U.S. cattle producers, cattle, and family-sized feedlots will continue.
And, while Speer shifts his narrow focus on trees within the sheep industry to the cattle industry, as evidenced by his claim that “Year-to-date, beef production on the fed side of the business is running ~2% ahead of 2023,” it’s important to note how this impressive feat was accomplished. The CME Group stated, “The increase in fed cattle weights is a direct result of cattle spending more days on feed.” which is also why cattle are grading more prime and choice than last year. See CME Group, Daily Livestock Report, Vol. 22, No. 107 /June 5, 2024.
The cattle industry must heed the canary’s warning.
**Note to editors: This op-ed first appeared on Drovers.com.
Bill Bullard is the CEO of R-CALF USA, the nation’s largest nonprofit trade association exclusively representing U.S. cattle producers in the multi-segmented beef supply chain.
Bullard’s photo is available here.
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Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) is the largest producer-only cattle trade association in the United States. It is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle and sheep industries. For more information visit www.r-calfusa.com or call (406) 252-2516.
