The final rule

Explained

The link above will take you to a question and answer page on the new rules for importing cattle from Canada to the USA. The USDA will now allow animals born after 1999 to be imported for beef and breeding purposes, plus allowing many more categories of beef products and by products. The coming weeks market-wise should be very interesting, as usually allowing more imports from Canada is rough on cull cow prices here in the US. The final rule also allows many more dairy animals to be imported, usually resulting in excess milk production and lower farm gate milk prices. This time, however, the Canadian Loonie is very strong vs. the American dollar. Things may not be as bad for US farmers as they have been in other years when the border is open (although conservative estimates point to 600,000 head coming south in the next year.)

I am not holding my breath anyhow. The border opens today and we already took a $400 hit on one heifer we sold last week....evidently buyers are planning on higher supplies and lower prices. (We were getting $1200 and got $800 instead for a breeding age Holstein heifer.) Farmers in Canada are already hurting too, due to the divergence between the currencies. I don't pretend to know what will happen in the next few months in either the beef or dairy markets....other than that food giants like Tyson and Dean Foods will prosper and we farmers won't get rich selling our products to them.