The NCBA Working Group addressing cattle market volatility passed resolutions at last week’s annual meeting in Nashville designed to increase the amount of negotiated cash cattle in the U.S. Brad Kooima, who is a cattle feeder and co-owner of Kooima and Kaemingk Commodities in Sioux Center, serves on that committee. He says Iowa and Nebraska brought proposals to try to achieve 50-percent negotiated cash cattle nationally. However, that approach failed and was replaced by a resolution from Texas that will encourage less formula cattle regionally.

He says another proposal was deferred to the summer meeting in Denver that would change contract specifications so the contract is more reflective of the current market.

Kooima says after a year of working on the cattle market issues he feels like they have made some progress.

He says they still have some work to do though to increase the amount of negotiated cash cattle and improve transparency to in turn make the cattle futures a more viable risk management tool for hedgers.