Business in the Lone Star State
california producers lead at 2022 cattle industry convention by CCA Director of Communications Katie Roberti Less than six months after the 2021 event took place in Nashville, the 2022 Cattle Industry Convention and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Tradeshow was held in Houston the first week of February. COVID forced last year’s annual meeting to take place in August, but for 2022 the event was able to return to its regular rhythm of happening in February. Although it was a short amount of time between the two annual events, there was no shortage of issues to discuss, speakers to hear from and announcements to be made at this year’s Cattle Industry Convention. And dozens of California representatives made the trip to the Lone Star State not just to participate, but to lead. With cattle markets continuing to be at the top of many producers’ concerns, preparing to discuss solutions and create policy in Houston at NCBA’s Live Cattle Marketing Committee Meeting is where CCA leadership placed much of its attention ahead of the event. California was well represented at the standing-roomonly meeting as seven producers voted on behalf of CCA with additional producers from the state and CCA staff in attendance. Once the time for new business on the agenda was reached, California was the first of any state to speak, with CCA Price Discovery Subcommittee Chair Seth Scribner, Paso Robles, offering an amendment for a current NCBA resolution to include opposition for any government mandates. CCA’s decision to push for no mandates resulted from the CCA Price Discovery Subcommittee’s months of work studying the markets and deliberating over possible solutions to fix disparities. CCA leadership ultimately determined that having the government involved in regulating how ranchers market their cattle and conduct their business is a step too far. In the meeting, dozens of producers from across the country
18 California Cattleman March 2022
spoke both in opposition and in support of the amendment during the discussion period. Through a roll call vote, NCBA membership eventually voted on an amendment, as reported by Agri-Pulse, “to specifically state their opposition to cash trade mandates, adding clarity to an explicit part of a bill being pushed by a bipartisan group of senators on Capitol Hill.” “We supported not going towards a cash mandate,” CCA President Tony Toso, Hornitos said. “That’s the position we took, but we did it with analysis. We did it with preparation. We did it trying to reason and logistically apply what we learned into those decisions. We didn’t do it haphazardly.” The vote final was 146 in support of the no cash mandates policy and 41 in opposition. The policy was then approved at the NCBA Board of Directors meeting later in the week. A full conversation with Toso explaining more about what happened in the live cattle marketing meeting, CCA’s preparation for it and the continued work CCA will be doing on cattle market issues is available on Sorting Pen: