On Thursday the House Agriculture Committee unanimously passed South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson’s Cattle Contract Library Act of 2021. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association welcomes the bill. Director of Government Affairs and Market Regulatory Policy Tanner Beemer says it will improve transparency to the cattle markets.

He says there are four specific areas that must be addressed to fix the broken cattle market pricing problem.

Beemer says under the current formula bucket contained in the mandatory livestock reporting act are four main transaction types. He says those are negotiated cash, negotiated grid, contracts usually forward and the fourth is formula.

He says Johnson’s legislation allows producers to compare their marketing arrangements to those of other producers and potentially when they negotiate with the packer get more favorable terms for their agreements.