Producer Focus Groups: Price Risk Management Contributions to Economic Sustainability in the Cattle Industry

Sustainable beef production is categorized into environmental stewardship, economic opportunity and social diligence across the beef value chain. However, cattle producers must be able to benefit from the economic opportunity in order to adopt the environmental and social components. Economic sustainability is commonly understood to be a farm’s capability to survive or to be economically viable over time. Making profitable short-run decisions is key to surviving long-term (Griffith and Boyer, 2020). A key component in economic sustainability is having access to and using effective tools and strategies to reduce economic losses. Cattle producers must manage many forms of risk (e.g. production, financial, technological, legal, casualty, policy), but all sources of risk have been relatively small compared to price risk (Hart, Babcock, and Hayes, 2001). Providing stocker and cow-calf producers with information on how to utilize price risk management tools would benefit these producers in making economically sustainable decisions and allowing them to endure and continue operating during and following economic shocks. However, it is also important to gain the cattle producer’s viewpoint on price risk management tools. Therefore, the specific objectives of the focus groups were to: 1. Determine the attributes of currently available price risk management tools that lead to non-use or fail to mitigate risk; and 2. Provide discussion from producers about ways to improve risk management tools and strategies for cow-calf and stocker producers. The goal of this effort is to help guide continuing education to beef cattle producers as well as inform policy makers and private industry on ways to improve price risk management to enhance economic sustainability for beef cattle producers.