THEE Hot Barn Report!
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Welcome to America’s Hot Barn Report now heard coast to coast and border to border
It is official, we have just confirmed our 12th reporting barn for the big fall run. We now blanket the great Northern beef belt from Motely, Minnesota to Torrington, Wyoming.
The Hot Barn Report is a fast paced and entertaining daily program covering the latest news and trends in the cattle industry, hosted by Monte James, a veteran rodeo announcer, radio host and industry expert! The Hot Barn Report features interviews with industry leaders, market analysts, producers and ranchers and features True Price Discovery from salebarns in Great Northern Beef Belt and across the nation.
Rome is burning! Welcome to this special Friday edition of the Hot Barn Report.
Politico released a fiery article this week on the state of American agriculture and USDA’s response to that. There is no doubt that there is a flurry of penalty flags on the field but there seems to be no referees in sight to reign in the power that big ag corporations have wielded over rural America. I mean, one minute you buy a tractor, and the next you can’t even repair it in your own shop because the company that manufactured it seems to own the rights to repair it too.
The Biden administration has talked a tough game, like most, but the pace of implementing regulatory reforms has been slower than most can accept.
In that Politico article an Iowa hog farmer said, “Vilsack, he’s doing a little bit here and there but my message to all them guys, including Vilsack, is: ‘Rome’s burning, guys, we’re disappearing. Approximately 92 percent of independent pig farmers are gone and the infrastructure for that type of agriculture is going and a lot of it is gone already.”
In addition, the American sheep industry is skeleton of what it once was and for months I have been telling you that our cattle inventory is the lowest it has been in decades with no growth in site. This all equates to producers who are no longer “living off the land.” This means legacy’s lost and a shriveling rural America.
As if that isn’t enough proof in your pudding, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City just reported this month, “Farm debt continued to increase alongside faster growth in farm production loans. Similar to recent quarters, outstanding agricultural loan balances at commercial banks increased by about 5%. Non-real estate loans increased at the fastest pace since 2016 while growth in real estate loans slowed slightly. Rising production costs and depletion of working capital could further increase credit needs, particularly for producers who have used cash reserves to reduce loan levels in recent years.” This literally puts a knot in my stomach as we all know that interest rates have continued to march northward the last few months and with input costs increasing, we all know that this spells disaster in farm and ranch country. The real kicker is this, “Growth in farm loan balances was more pronounced than in recent years,” according to the Federal Reserve Bank, “particularly for agricultural banks. Farm debt increased from a year ago at slightly more than half of all banks, the largest share since 2016. In comparison, farm loan balances grew at nearly 80% of agricultural banks.” That is not a good scenario, we know that all that debt is being spread over fewer producers today.
But DC is slowed by the blame game which allows corporations to accelerate their play book of plowing up profits in the name of efficiency but taking out the smallest players one by one and consolidating every corner of the ag industry.
With the fall run coming up, marketing your cattle has to be on your mind. Contact a Hot Barn today to discuss your cattle marketing needs. Stockmens Livestock, Lemmon Livestock, North Platte Stockyards, St. Onge/Newell, Platte Livestock Market, Tri County Stockyards, Torrington Livestock, Creighton Livestock Market, Bassett Livestock Auction, Mobridge Livestock, Ogallala Livestock Auction Market, and Presho Livestock. Catch them all on CattleUSA.com.
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