Sheep Industry News July 2025

President’s Notes BEN LEHFELDT ASI PRESIDENT

Producer Profitability

F or me, and for nearly all ASI members, our livelihood comes down to producer profitability. We have all been challenged for decades to find ways to make the balance sheet balance and the black shine a little brighter than the red. This is nothing new to farmers and ranchers and, unfortunately, especially not to sheep producers. Sheep producer profitability is influenced by a variety of factors, including market demand for wool and meat, feed costs, and breeding efficiency. Producers must carefully manage grazing practices and ensure the health of their flocks to optimize production while maintaining sustainable operations. Regionally, this can vary significantly across the US sheep industry. That often creates a struggle for national organizations, which must fight many individual battles that are vital to producers but differ across sheep-producing regions. As a producer and ASI member, it is extremely important to not only work with ASI staff but, first and foremost, to contact your executive board representative. Your executive board has some very important upcoming decisions to make regarding ASI funds and how best to utilize those funds for the benefit of producers. The mix of private ownership in key infrastructure throughout both the lamb meat and wool processing production systems plays a large part in determining where the limited capital we have can be leveraged to help realize producer success. Please reach out to your Executive Board Representative to request a meeting. The officer team would be happy to provide an update on ASI priorities, and it would be very helpful to understand where we should be spending our time and money to work with and support your region. Your officer team and ASI staff are working hard to provide our councils, committees, and executive board with all the details they may need to make important decisions on the Wool Trust budget and tools to help US producers compete with lamb imports. We have a budget-conscious mid-year meeting planned for July 14-15 in Denver, CO. This will be a very important meeting, mak ing it essential that our priorities are aligned for success. Communication will continue to be a focus of your officer team, and we will work diligently with staff to provide information through the executive board, councils, and committees. In Washington, we continue to highlight and seek champions for the lamb and wool industry in the legislature. To me, this is more important than ever, given the unpredictability across all segments of government. The reconciliation process and Farm Bill progress—or lack thereof—are continually being updated by our Corner stone team. We must stay closely “attached” to those individual conversations in DC to ensure that at critical times the lamb and wool voice is heard and included in the package. We continue to work individually with leadership in both the House and Senate to secure the champions we need for the sheep industry. Not only is it important to work as ASI, but it is just as important to have a consistent message passed through other respected organizations in DC. Please make sure to be a sheep champion within our sister organizations, like Farm Bureau, Farmers Union, NCBA, National Grazing Lands Coalition, PLC, and others. This is the anniversary of the meeting past president Brad Boner at tended, hosted by the Livestock Marketing Association, where the goal was to bring issues from across agriculture to relay through our different organizations to help save ag production and family farms and ranches. This focus is even more important today. Please reach out to your ASI leaders and other ag organization leaders and help us get the message to consumers and elected of ficials — American Producer Profitability must be a priority. Thank you to all our ASI staff, member state staffs, and all sheep industry volunteers for their time. Enjoy Summer!

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