Outlook • July 2023
Better Market Insight for Both Sides of the Transaction
Report prepared in July 2023 for the Cattle Contracts Library Working Group of the NCBA Live Cattle Marketing Committee.
Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Evaluation
By Don Close, Chief Research & Analytics Officer, and Dave Weaber, Senior Animal Protein Analyst
Don Close and Dave Weaber evaluated the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service's Cattle Contracts Library (CCL) pilot, which was implemented in January 2023 and is funded by Congress through September 2023.
Don and Dave examined the CCL's strengths and weaknesses by analyzing the pilot's data sets, gathering feedback from market participants, and interpreting how well the CCL has performed against its goals since inception.
One of the goals was to increase market transparency, which has been a point of contention in the cattle industry. In their evaluation, Don and Dave find that the CCL supports that goal in various ways and identify the opportunities that improved transparency would bring to the cattle market.
"Over time," they write, "this transparency could lead to a larger variety of contracts as new cattle specifications and combinations of premiums and discounts and base price adjustments are used to signal market participants. This should allow the beef supply chain to deliver a higher percentage of cattle with certain attributes that consumers and the various sectors desire."
Download the full CCL evaluation, using the PDF link on the right, for their complete findings and recommendations.
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