WASHINGTON (DTN) -- President Donald Trump's private meeting with ranchers on Sept. 4 was supposed to be a chance to discuss some of the cattle industry's most pressing concerns. Instead, much of the hourlong conversation centered on wolves.

The White House emerged from the meeting with a series of actions touching cattle production, including a directive to explore country-of-origin labeling for beef, changes to wolf protections and ways to expand regional meat processing.

The announcement offered something for nearly every corner of the cattle industry, but most provisions face regulatory or legal hurdles, congressional involvement or further study. Only a few can move immediately, including expanded emergency grazing on Conservation Reserve Program acres.

The agenda was driven in part by an R-CALF proposal that included mandatory country-of-origin labeling, checkoff reform, confidentiality in mandatory price reporting and fair-trade priorities.

R-CALF welcomed the actions. "These executive orders don't fix everything with the stroke of a pen, but they put the weight of the administration behind tackling several longstanding challenges facing cattle producers," said Dave Hyde, an eastern Ohio cattle producer and R-CALF president who attended the signing.

But inside the hourlong meeting with the president before the signing, the rancher-led agenda never fully materialized. The group hoped to discuss beef imports and plant closures.

"Unfortunately, it never came to that," Hyde told DTN.

Wolves dominated the conversation, particularly the fight over delisting gray and Mexican wolves from the Endangered Species Act. Ranchers have argued that federal protections contribute to livestock depredation while compensation programs do not adequately cover their losses.

Trump was on board, saying publicly, "I'm signing an order authorizing ranchers to protect rural communities and cattle herds from the predatory Mexican gray wolves and others, which are costing them billions of dollars over the years."

The Interior Department now has 90 days to assess if gray and Mexican gray wolf populations have recovered enough to be delisted or downlisted.

But both privately and publicly, he suggested ranchers shoot ESA-protected wolves and asked whether they posed a threat to humans. Inside the meeting, it took South Dakota rancher Amanda Radke interrupting the president to steer the conversation back toward affordability.

"He sort of got fixated on the wolf issue," Hyde said.

Shad Sullivan, a Texas rancher and property rights chair for R-CALF said in a podcast over the weekend: "We had a strategy in place about the things we needed to talk about. But President Trump got sidetracked on wolves. The wolves conversation took over."

Hyde was promised the opportunity to explain his story by Agriculture Secretary Rollins, in the hours of preparation held at USDA.

Following the August closure of the JBS Souderton plant in Pennsylvania and the Tyson plant in Joslin, Illinois, "I got guys calling me saying I never dreamed this is how I'd go out of the cattle business, and they're quitting," Hyde said, describing farmers who no longer have the processing locations they need.

Hyde, who is not directly affected by wolves, saw the damage caused by steel imports to eastern Ohio while working as an electrician for most of his life. Now, he was ready to tell his story about beef imports, hoping to protect his second occupation.

The opportunity to discuss imports and plant closures never came.

"I was very impatient ... I want to talk about the TRQs (tariff-rate quotas) and the beef coming in," Sullivan said on the podcast.

Trump later identified Argentina and Paraguay as key sources of U.S. beef imports and strengthening enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, along with the easing of obstacles to local meat processing.

The actions were welcomed by much of the ranching community. "It takes a lot of steps to get where we need to be," Sullivan said.

Rollins has since acknowledged the limits of what the administration can accomplish in four years, lowering expectations that every issue raised by ranchers will be resolved under Trump.

"Are we going to be able to fix everything in four years? We will not. But are we going to be able to build an infrastructure and a foundation where we are putting farmers first ... I believe ... everyone in this room looks back and says, "Yes, they didn't solve everything, but they made so many positive steps in the right direction," she said at the Farm Progress Show last week.

WHO WASN'T IN THE ROOM

The White House had a curated setup for the executive order signing, a common strategy across presidencies. American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall and former NFL player-turned-rancher Joe Thomas appeared for photo opportunities but did not participate in the hour-long discussion before the signing.

Behind closed doors, Hyde, Sullivan and Radke did most of the talking on ranchers and beef. Others present included Nathan Knapp, Tucker Brown, Keely Cavello, Casey Murph and Jim Mundorf, who represented Western issues, with one rancher in the group considering some of them "social influencers."

Also present were the president, Brooke Rollins and her chief of staff, several agency staff members, and Jason Beckner, deputy associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison, who serves as the president's agriculture policy adviser.

The makeup of the meeting represents a shift from traditional farm lobby groups receiving attention on priority issues to now independent cattlemen.

Groups such as the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the U.S. Cattlemen's Association were not briefed on the announcement until roughly one hour before the executive order was signed, according to both organizations.

AFBF's Zippy Duvall said in a statement that he spoke with the president after the signing, raising his concerns that the plan to increase beef imports "is hurting farm families." He shared that he witnessed "significant price drops for cattle across the country," which has been a "setback to rebuilding the U.S. herd."

The general farm organization was encouraged by the potential of wolf delisting but reiterated their policy that they support voluntary COOL that meets World Trade Organization requirements.

Ethan Lane, NCBA vice president of government affairs, told DTN earlier in the week: "They (the administration) didn't call anybody. They didn't talk to anybody. They didn't gut-check anything with anybody."

NCBA opposes COOL and allegations of market manipulation, arguing that the supply chain must be able to operate freely, including larger packers that provide capacity and premium pricing.

"I appreciate the outside-the-box thinking from the secretary's office, but we're still sort of wondering where this thing goes. We're a trade association, not podcasters or social media influencers, so our voice is pretty diminished in this environment," he said.

NCBA represents 180,000 cattle producers nationwide.

The organization later posted on social media, without directly engaging Friday's announcement: "Policies affecting cattle producers should be led by cattle producers. America's farmers and ranchers deserve a transparent and honest debate about market impacts, implementation challenges, and the long-term effects on the U.S. cattle industry. Every proposal should be evaluated through one lens: Will it strengthen opportunities for producers and support the long-term growth?"

REGIONAL BEEF

The private meeting also touched on Packers and Stockyards Act concerns, a key issue for ranchers who argue that consolidation in meatpacking has left producers with fewer outlets for their cattle.

Hyde sees hope in the Sept. 4-announced plan for producers who don't deal with Western issues, because enforcing Packers and Stockyards rules while enabling regional processing could help move more product too.

Right now, 26 meat processing plants operate under Cooperative Interstate Shipment (CIS) agreements out of 227 facilities in Ohio. With the need for more regional plants and the loss of big packers, "it's almost like they're making a choke point for all these fat cows," Hyde said.

"It would be a shot in the arm if we had a plant here that was CIS inspected, and I could take and sell stuff in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," he explained.

The administration seeks to expand agreements like CIS, which only exists in 11 states.

EXECUTIVE ORDER, ACTION?

Executive orders, which Trump has frequently used, often set direction rather than create policy.

"This is a long list of things that you just don't get to do by executive fiat in our system," Lane said.

For the ranchers who sat across from Trump, however, the meeting offered a different takeaway. They believed the president understood many of their concerns, even if the conversation did not follow the agenda they brought into the room.

They also believed Rollins, like them, sometimes struggled to communicate those concerns to her boss.

"The truth is, an inside look would reveal that Sec. Rollins' heart is just like mine and yours ... she's a freedom maker," Sullivan said.

Beef and affordability in midterm elections is a relationship Trump is navigating. Lane told DTN that beef shouldn't be on the ballot box because it's "not a bug; it's a feature."

"The fact that consumers still find value even at today's prices, our product, and are demonstrating that by buying it repeatedly rather than the other proteins they could buy right next door to it at a cheaper price, is not something we feel like needs to be fixed. We feel like it's a reflection of the relationship we've built with consumers," he said.

Also see "New Beef Order Directs MCOOL Review" here:

https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Jake Zajkowski can be reached at jake.zajkowski@dtn.com

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