Fat & Happy, Talking Calves & Prices at Montana Farm Bureau

Casey Mott kicked off our coverage from the Montana Farm Bureau convention in Missoula Wednesday morning. He ranches near Custer and Miles City, and also serves as the Vice President of the Montana Farm Bureau.

Fat & happy when it comes to calves and prices. That's how I'd sum up our chat with Mott talking about how the year has been so far from the ranching side of the house. Valier rancher Gene Curry mentioned a similar storyline, but also highlighted how much the cost of everything has gone up over the years. (They both joined us in the 7a hour below. Some of the conversation was also recorded and used later in the 9a hour)

MT Farm Bureau VP Casey Mott: "Talking about how life has been on the ranch for the past year. You know, early on- January to May- we had a half inch of rain at the place in Miles City. But from May until now, I think we we made our yearly total and then some. If you told me back in May that we were going to have the year that we did, I would not have believed you we had. Fact, my brother and I, when we shipped calves on the 31st October, you know, we had some- they were nice looking calves. And we sorted the, probably one of the biggest ones off, and it's weighed 760 pounds. In May, we didn't think we were going to break 500. We had that good a year."

Valier rancher Gene Curry is a Farm Bureau member and former MT Stockgrowers President who now serves on the MT Board of Livestock. Even though it was dry in Valier, he said the calves are still coming in heavy.

Russell Nemetz with the Western Ag Network also highlighted the strong cattle prices, but added that maybe the high prices are right where they should be given the high input costs facing producers here in recent years. (Russell kicked off the 8a hour below)

Gene Curry also highlighted those high input costs.

Gene Curry:  "I think it takes roughly the same number of minutes of an average wage earners salary to buy a pound of beef today as it did in the mid 70s. You know, wages have kept up to what beef prices are today. And the other thing that I noticed, in the 70s, it probably took 10 or 12 steer calves to buy a new pickup. Today, it would take 30 steer calves to buy a new pickup."

Farmers; though, are struggling. Could another relief package be on the way soon? That's part of what we talked about with Nicole Rolf who heads up government affairs for the MT Farm Bureau. She was also joined by Brian Glenn who flew in from DC with the American Farm Bureau Federation.

We also got a great update on the progress we are now seeing thanks to the new Trump Administration in Washington, DC overturning the Biden era WOTUS rule and much more. (They joined us at the end of the 7a hour)

Full audio of our Farm Bureau convention coverage is below: