Focusing on the seed and meat industries, the USDA has unveiled several steps it says will deliver on President Joe Biden’s executive order to promote fair and competitive markets for U.S. farmers and ranchers.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack identified several actions by the USDA, according to a news release, including:
- Leveraging its funding and research capacity, as well as interagency partnerships, to increase transparency and improve researcher access to seed germplasm, the starting materials plant breeders need to create diverse, resilient, and competitive seed varieties. These were key recommendations identified in USDA’s 2023 report, “More and Better Choices for Farmers: Promoting Fair Competition and Innovation in Seeds and Other Agricultural Inputs.”
- Publishing an interim report that assesses competitive conditions in the meat retail industry. The report draws on over 1,600 comments received from the public in response to USDA requests for information, interviews with small, medium, and large meatpackers, distributors, retailers, academics, and farmer or advocacy organizations. It identifies hidden fees and unjust/anticompetitive pricing strategies present in the beef market as a case study.
- Announcing the next steps in a new rulemaking effort under the Packers & Stockyards Act of 1921 to enhance price discovery and fairness in cattle markets. For years, USDA has fielded complaints from producers around beef packers using reported regional cash or spot prices as base prices for fed cattle formula pricing agreements, commonly known as Alternative Marketing Agreements, the USDA said. The department is issuing an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to seek comment on several possible interventions to develop new benchmarks as AMA base prices and approaches to trading when using benchmarks.
“Over these last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has made historic investments in agriculture to help farmers, small businesses, and rural communities get a fair shake,” Vilsack said in the release. “Our work on competition is about opening up new markets for farmers and delivering fairer, more competitive choices. Today’s actions will help to deliver on more choice and lower costs for seeds used by farmers, more choice and lower food costs for consumers, and a fairer marketplace for ranchers.”
