Mississippi’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson said that he isn’t happy about the imports and what they could mean for state ranchers. Gipson said that while he understands the goal is to temporarily reduce the price of ground beef in grocery stores, the long-term impacts on local farmers could be for the worse.
Gipson explained that the reason beef prices are so high now is because while the market demand for beef has expanded, cattle populations have dwindled. Extreme drought in the West, Gipson said, caused ranchers to liquidate their herds that have not yet made the comeback needed to fulfill supply and demand.
“We have a situation in America that we have a smaller herd of beef than we've had since the 1940s. We have a lot more people since the 1940s and a lot more demand for this same product, but we have a smaller herd,” Gipson said. “So the prices you see in the grocery store of high beef are simply a result of supply and demand.”
Gipson said his suggestion to resolve the issue is to implement tax credit incentives for ranchers to grow and retain their herds. This would help put money back into the pockets of farmers and local economies.
“Until that happens, we're gonna be dealing with an extremely tight supply, an extreme high cost. So this import of beef is, I guess it's perceived as a short-term fix, but it's definitely not a long-term support for our cattlemen in America,” Gipson said.
Executive Vice President Andy Berry of the Mississippi Cattlemen’s Association also said that rather than trying to import foreign beef, legislators should listen to farmers’ needs and how they can help them directly.
"It’s really disappointing, you know, when you're subsidizing a product that is grown and made and harvested here in America by American farmers, it is disappointing when you're going to have a government subsidize that product,” Berry said. “We encourage the administration to kind of take another look at this, look at ways that they can help us like our fuel and our fertilizer, and we would just encourage them to pull back this decision.”
The proclamation, President Trump stated that “If the action taken in this proclamation does not result in a lower sale price of imported ground beef, I may end the action taken in this proclamation in order to, among other things, prevent a windfall to foreign producers.” In a fact sheet from the White House website, the proclamation “encourages” beef to be sold at a 25% discount from the imported price.
