09/06/2026
Buckle up, everyone. This is probably going to be a long one.
Because watching the reaction to this new ranchers executive order, I feel like everyone is already taking the victory lap...
and I’m standing here wondering if the starting gun didn’t just go off.
The music is playing. People are cheering. The cattle world is posting like we just broke the tape and won the whole damn race.
Meanwhile, I’m looking around thinking...
Wait.
Did we actually win something?
Or did we just get handed the course map?
Then I pull back the curtain and somehow the race director is Oz.
Yes, I realize we are now mixing The Wizard of Oz with track and field.
Stay with me.
Because the more I read, the more this whole thing feels like a really impressive production surrounding an awful lot of “study this,” “review that,” “determine whether,” “make recommendations” and “report back in 60 or 90 days.”
And maybe those are the first steps toward real change.
I genuinely hope they are.
But first steps and finish lines are two very different places.
And I’m not ready for the victory lap when I’m still standing at the starting line.
Take the promise to make it easier for ranchers to process and sell their own beef.
It sounds like we click our boots together three times, say “there’s no place like the farm freezer,” and suddenly we’ve unlocked some brand-new path from pasture to plate.
Except that path already exists.
We’ve sold beef direct before.
The problem is getting there feels less like a straight road and more like one of those obstacle races where every wall you climb has someone standing on the other side holding out their hand for another fee.
First, you need an inspected processor, and those appointments can already be hard to come by. Inspected processing costs more, too.
Then the beef comes home already inspected, packaged and labeled, and here in Iowa there is another licensing layer just to store it on the farm for resale.
In our case, that essentially means verifying that yes, the inspected beef is sitting in a freezer that can be secured.
Wonderful.
Here is your annual piece of paper.
Ta-da.
Except every part of that magic trick has a price tag, from the processing and licensing to the freezer humming away while we carry the inventory.
A major packer spreads those costs across an enormous amount of beef.
A farm like ours spreads them across a handful of animals.
And eventually those costs roll downhill and land in exactly one place:
the price of your steak.
Which is part of how we end up in the absurd position of telling consumers to support local farmers while building a system that can make buying directly from those farmers more expensive.
Removing the middleman sounds wonderful.
But if you replace the middleman with a line of toll booths, you haven’t exactly shortened the trip.
So if this order ultimately means more inspected-processing capacity, fewer redundant costs and a genuinely easier road between the person raising the animal and the person buying the beef, I will happily cheer.
But right now?
We’ve been handed directions.
We haven’t cleared the hurdles.
mCOOL has the same little cloud of stage smoke around it.
If you read the celebration online, you might think mandatory Country of Origin Labeling is back.
I want it back.
The tag inside my sweatshirt can tell me where it was made. The bottom of a coffee mug can tell me where it came from.
We seem perfectly capable of tracking where nearly everything in our lives originates until we get to the thing we are actually putting inside our bodies.
A mom standing under the fluorescent lights of a grocery store should be able to pick up a package of beef and know where that animal was born, raised and harvested.
That should not require a decoder ring.
But this order did not restore mCOOL.
It starts the review, analysis and legal process that could potentially get us there.
And maybe that road leads exactly where we want it to.
But we just got on the road.
Nobody needs to be popping ch*****ne at the destination yet.
Then there is heifer retention.
This one might be the prettiest rabbit coming out of the hat until you look at the actual heifer standing at the bunk.
She is not an economic model.
She is a check.
A very real check at a time when diesel is pushing $6 a gallon in Iowa, operating money is expensive and everything it takes to keep cattle alive seems to have found a way to cost more.
Retaining her means choosing not to cash that check today.
Instead, you feed her, breed her, calve her and wait.
And wait.
Because even after she becomes a cow, she still has years of work ahead before she has truly paid back what it cost to develop and retain her. The general figure is roughly five calves before a cow has really paid for herself.
So price protection if the market falls somewhere down the road?
Fine.
That protects one piece of the gamble.
But price protection on a future cow does absolutely nothing if the ranch cannot stay afloat long enough for that heifer to become one.
If rebuilding the American cow herd is really the goal, that is the conversation I want to have.
What actually makes it possible for producers to keep her now?
Maybe that looks more like a tax incentive for females genuinely retained in the herd. Not another giant government check. Not another subsidy. Just something that leaves a little more money in the operation while she is eating instead of earning.
Because you cannot rebuild tomorrow’s cow herd by making producers sacrifice today’s survival to get there.
And then there are wolves.
Before somebody from Wyoming launches themselves into my comment section, no, this is not something we battle here in Iowa.
I know.
But I have friends raising cattle out West where this is not an online argument. It is an actual calf lying dead in a pasture and a real financial loss somebody has to absorb.
So I understand why this matters.
And I also understand that wildlife policy probably cannot be rewritten with a Sharpie overnight.
Maybe the studies, recovery reviews and policy changes outlined here really are necessary steps.
But that is exactly my point.
They are steps.
The rancher dealing with depredation did not wake up the next morning with some sweeping new ability to protect livestock.
Once again, we heard the starting gun.
And somehow the podium ceremony started anyway.
Maybe all of this becomes exactly what producers need.
God, I hope it does.
There are absolutely pieces here that could turn into meaningful change if we actually carry them across the finish line.
But that is the part I don’t want us to lose in all the confetti.
An announcement is not implementation.
A study is not a solution.
And pointing toward the finish line is not the same thing as crossing it.
So while it feels like half the cattle world is already waving from the podium, I’m not taking the victory lap yet.
Not because I don’t want this to be a win.
I desperately do.
I just think we should probably finish the race first.
Right now, I can still hear is "on your marks, get set..."
