GUEST OPINIONS

Looking Back on 2022, Moving on to 2023

It has been a challenging year for sheep producers in Wyoming. Last year, we benefited from increased demand for American lamb, providing a well-earned income boost to producers for the quality protein we consistently produce.

But, in the lead-up to selling lambs this year, live lamb prices dropped month after month as consumers responded to inflation and poor economic conditions by tightening their belts.

Wyoming producers moving their lambs to mar ket this fall were faced with low prices and a mar ket saturated with heavier lambs waiting for process ing, combined with a labor shortage to handle the work.

We worked with the American Sheep Industry Association to gain con gressional support for a Sec tion 32 lamb purchase of this year’s maturing lamb

By Wyoming Wool Growers Association

crop, and we anticipate an announcement on this purchase soon.

Many of us have always known challenges to the economic viability of American sheep producers can be sudden and devastat some changes along the way, including welcoming Sheep Specialist Alison Crane as WWGA’s new executive director in July.

Membership is already benefiting from Alison’s hands-on approach to help these opportunities with our members and sheep producers across the state as they arise. Policy issues

Policy issues have also taken center stage for WWGA this year as state

Gov. opposes WOTUS rule

Gov. Mark Gordon and 24 other Republican governors issued a joint letter to President Joe Biden opposing the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule and are calling on him to delay implementation until the U.S. Supreme Court issues a ruling in Sackett vs EPA

The governors argue President Biden’s most recent revision only further complicates the efforts to create certainty for rural communities. They make the case that the Biden administration’s overburdensome bureaucratic agenda could not come at a worse time for American families struggling with high inflation and rising gas prices.

President Biden’s WOTUS rule is being implemented months before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide on Sackett, which could significantly alter EPA’s regulatory authority.

For more information or to read the letter, visit drive. google.com/file/d/1QxABkKm7dbn9vhHxIvQ2wxqiuH00 j9BX/view

FDA sued over antibiotics

A coalition of public health advocacy groups and online activists have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), challenging the decision to keep important antibiotics in animal agriculture.

The lawsuit, filed on Jan. 24 by the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council and Public Citizen, claims FDA violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it denied a 2016 petition by the groups to ban the use of medically important antibiotics for disease prevention in livestock and poultry.

The FDA denied the petition in 2021, despite, according to the lawsuit, generally agreeing the overuse of antibiotics in food-producing animals can contribute to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, wrote the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

The lawsuit says the agency did not address the petition’s core concern that the use of antibiotics for disease prevention in livestock and poultry poses a significant threat to human health.

Domestic sales and distribution of medically important antimicrobial drugs approved for use in food-producing animals decreased by less than one percent between 2020 and 2021.

Since the significant decrease in sales volume in 2017, annual sales of medically important antimicrobials have remained at reduced levels, according to CVM’s 2021 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals.

Hay market efficiency studied

A team of research and Extension faculty from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) is launching a study to improve price discovery and market transparency in hay markets. These improvements will help create a more efficient market and provide valuable information which benefits buyers and sellers of hay.

While hay constitutes a major feed source for many livestock operations, market values for hay have rarely been studied.

Existing research focuses on hay auctions. However, most hay produced in the U.S. is not marketed through auctions. Rather, it is grown and fed on the same farm or is sold through private transactions, which means no publicly available transaction information is recorded.

This lack of hay market information helped prompt the latest UTIA study, through which researchers will conduct experiments to determine what hay attributes are valued by buyers and the value placed on those attributes given a variety of factors.

Understanding the valued attributes can help provide guidelines to creating additional transparency, allowing producers to make more informed purchasing and selling decisions.

The researchers are partnering with the Tennessee Cattlemen’s Association and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture on this three-year grant study, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service.

Deadline approaching

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reminds Mountain Region farmers and ranchers the deadline to respond to the 2022 Census of Agriculture is Feb. 6. Producers can respond online at agcounts.usda.gov or by mail.

Last month, NASS mailed the Census of Agriculture questionnaires to every known ag producer in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Conducted just once every five years, the ag census provides a complete account of the nation’s farms and ranches and the people who operate them. Responding to the Census of Agriculture is required by federal law under Title 7 USC 2204(g) Public Law 105-113. The same law requires NASS to keep all individual operations’ information confidential, use the data for statistical purposes only and publish the data in aggregate form to prevent disclosing the identity of any individual producer or farm operation.

“Thank you to the farmers and ranchers who have completed and returned their Census of Agriculture. The data collected in the ag census is used to make decisions impacting our communities and businesses,” said Rodger Ott, NASS director at the Mountain Regional Field Office. The Census of Agriculture remains the only source of uniform, comprehensive and impartial agriculture data for every state, county and U.S. territory. NASS will release the results of the ag census in 2024.

For more information, visit nass.usda.gov/agcensus For state specific questions, contact Wyoming NASS State Statistician Leslee Lohrenz at 1-800-392-3202.