Click or tap here to read more- and to hear the reaction and comments from both of these Farm Bureau leaders as they reflected about a historic afternoon at the 99th Annual Meeting of the American Farm Bureau. 

Here in Nashville, I sat down this week with Jim Robb of the Livestock Marketing Information Center recently to review the rather unexpected strength in markets this past year. Robb agreed that 2017 turned out to be a much better year than most in the agriculture industry would have anticipated.


"It turned out to be a year where, especially in the Fourth Quarter of 2017, the market was stronger than anticipated on the cattle side, supported by a stronger than anticipated beef market," Robb said. "The wholesale beef market was really the driver behind that. Everything went right that we could have imagined in 2017 compared to 2016."


According to Robb, demand for beef significantly outpaced predictions both domestically and internationally, particularly in the Asian markets like South Korea where he says the beef industry made deep inroads with this past year, taking away some of its market share from Australia. The fact that export levels stayed consistently stable throughout year, certainly impressed Robb, compared to other protein products that struggled during the summer months. Even in spite of new tariffs on some beef exports to Japan, that market showed remarkable resilience in 2017 - and enjoyed a strong economy for the first year in many, as mirrored in the US where he says domestic grocers played the beef market to their mutual advantage, featuring beef products up until the week before Thanksgiving.


"Looks like a record year," he said. "We anticipated a good year but the price we've been able to sell the product for has certainly added more than we thought to the total value of beef exports. Plus, demand coming from the retail sector was very competitive and was a key component to the demand for wholesale beef to be strong - which then fed through to packers' demand for cattle, fed cattle being strong - and came right back to calf and yearling prices."


Listen to Robb and I reflect on the dynamics that factored into the better than anticipated cattle market of this past year, on yesterday's Beef Buzz - click here.

Opioid addiction, a growing epidemic across rural America, took center stage at the American Farm Bureau Convention yesterday in Nashville. AFBF has partnered with the USDA and the National Farmers Union to bring awareness to this problem that is now affecting every three out of four farmers and ranchers, through their 'Farm Town Strong' campaign. AFBF President Zippy Duvall joined his NFU counterpart, Roger Johnson, Monday for a panel discussion to address this problem. I had the chance to speak with Johnson about how his organization is cooperating with AFBF and USDA to shine the spotlight on this issue.

"This is a really big issue in farm country and farmers don't understand it's as big an issue as it is," Johnson prefaced. "If you look at the statistics coming out, one thing we know is that the crisis is greater in rural America than urban America. About half of rural Americans know somebody in their family, or a direct acquaintance or themselves that is directly impacted by an opioid addiction."

Johnson cited government studies that indicate life expectancy in rural America is actually decreasing - the primary contributing factor being opioid addiction. Directly related to that, he cites yet another study showing that in a three-year span between 2013-1016, opioid addiction in rural America had an annual increase of 88 percent.

The two general ag groups, along with the USDA, have agreed to continue working together to help spread the word about rural America's opioid addiction crisis. Johnson says the first step to resolving it is making sure people understand it. He says there is an information gap that exists currently, and believes that holding more discussions like this one will lift the stigma on drug addiction and bring our rural communities together in fixing it.