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"Fighting for the Independent U.S. Cattle Producer"

May 2, 2025

Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa

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Please find below R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary that discusses the reason the U.S. must shift from globalism to a producing nation to ensure our food security and reinvigorate rural America. It is in three formats: written, audioandvideo. Anyone is welcome to use it for broadcasting or reporting.

We’re In the Transition Phase

Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA

Saying we’re facing uncertainty in rural America is an understatement. We’re in the midst of a seismic shift—a true paradigm shift. We’re just now beginning to emerge from a decades-long era that literally wiped out hundreds of thousands of livestock producers—producers of both cattle and sheep.

The era we’re emerging from is one that embraced globalism and free trade, which are interchangeable terms. The promise made by the globalists was that American agriculture would export its way to prosperity. Recall the mantra by the beef-packing lobby that 95% of the world’s population lives outside the United States, so they generated an outsized emphasis on exports.

I say outsized because the U.S. cattle industry underproduces for the U.S. domestic market, with beef and cattle exports representing less than 12% of domestic production. So for decades, as industry leaders focused almost exclusively on exports, the tail was indeed wagging the dog.

But the emphasis on exports was not without success for global exporters. During the past three decades, beef and cattle exports increased from 1.9 billion pounds to 3.2 billion pounds—that’s a 68% increase.

So who were the benefactors of this decades-long focus on exports? It certainly wasn’t the 285,000 U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers who exited the industry during that time, or the 86,000 family-scale feedlot owners who likewise exited the industry during this same period. No, the principal benefactors were the global exporters themselves, who captured an outsized share of the revenues generated by exports.

And here’s what went wrong. In order to increase market access abroad for beef and cattle exports, the globalists agreed to first give our foreign competitors greater access to the U.S. domestic market—including competitors in countries that overproduce for their own home markets. That’s why the U.S. is weighed down by huge beef and cattle trade deficits with Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico, and Brazil.

The result was that imports of beef and cattle have far outpaced our exports, leaving the U.S. awash in imports that have displaced our domestic cattle producers and our domestic feedlots. This is causing us to become more and more dependent on foreign supply chains for our beef.

This trade imbalance and outsized emphasis on exports, which has caused our industry to shrink over the past three decades, becomes readily apparent when we look at live cattle trade with Canada and Mexico. Last year, the U.S. exported 359,000 head of live cattle to Canada and Mexico but imported 2 million head of live cattle from them. This means we imported more than five times the number of live cattle than we exported.

Let’s take a look at this. Now the 359,000 live cattle we exported provided opportunities for U.S. cow/calf producers to breed and maintain the number of mother cows needed to raise the 359,000 calves that were sold. But the 2 million head we imported eliminated opportunities for U.S. cow/calf producers to breed and maintain the number of mother cows needed to raise the 2 million calves that were purchased from Canada and Mexico. The net result is that our imbalanced trade flows eliminated opportunities for U.S. cattle producers to breed and maintain the number of cows needed to raise 1.6 million calves.

Now, let’s take a big-picture approach and simplify this even further: If every time I buy five head of cattle from you, you turn around and buy one animal from me, then you’re likely to keep playing the game until I either quit or you run out of cattle.

The new paradigm we’re transitioning toward is one in which our nation becomes more of a producing nation than a consuming nation. In other words, we are moving toward an economy in which we will produce more of what we consume.

Going back to the live cattle example, we need to invest in and expand our domestic cattle industry, so it is U.S. cattle producers producing the 1.6 million calves that we now source from foreign countries.

We need to do the same with our beef production and lamb production. We need relief from the excessive imports that have contributed to the shrinking of our domestic industries so our livestock industry can invest in and expand our domestic supply chains.

Doing this will create jobs; demand for more services, equipment, and supplies; and opportunities for aspiring farmers and ranchers to enter the industry. In short, it will reinvigorate rural communities that have been hollowed out during our decades-long courtship with globalism.

Unfortunately, we can’t pivot from the wrong path we’ve been on for decades to the right path overnight. It will take time, and we should consider how we can all help facilitate this important transition.

Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) is the largest producer-only 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. Visit www.r-calfusa.com or call (406) 252-2516 for more information.