Sheep Industry News September 2025

President’s Notes BEN LEHFELDT ASI PRESIDENT

Legislative Craziness!

I t has been a whirlwind six months in the legislative process, with little time to catch our breath. Whether it is weathering a storm of layoffs throughout our ARS or USDA stations, or expediting an administrative message for the sheep industry to D.C. before the tide changes, life has been exciting for all of us trying to make positive change for the industry. Where are we at? What can we do better? What can we do faster? All of these are important questions. Over the past six months, we have assembled several teams to concentrate on certain issues. The H2A Working Group has been very active early in the year, and it looks like ag worker labor reform may be an important topic taken up by legislators after the reconciliation process. This group is actively working with members of the Department of Labor, and I look forward to progress in this area. I am very thankful to all our state associations stepping up and helping generate messages that can help lead us to make a dif ference immediately. Peter and our Cornerstone team have been working hard to identify legitimate opportunities to slow lamb import pressures. We have been providing lamb company data to our Trade Representatives when negotiating the tariff struc ture. Along with direct negotiation with import countries, progress is still being made towards a potential trade case. We need some reprieve from this influx of imported lamb, and we are going to press every button we can to find a path to a “Fair” (not necessarily “Free”) lamb trade. While this may be an optimistic time period to make progress on lamb imports, the wool trade has suffered from tariffs and, more specifically, the unpredictability of where, when, and how the tariffs may change next. It is hard to predict when predict ability of the trade may return, but there has been a large focus on both domestic and international wool trade by your Wool Council, the officer team, and staff. There is continuing work being done identifying the needs of our domestic textile chain, identifying ways to provide value for coarser and off-wools in the market, and ranking short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term needs with funding sources. I expect ASI to be delivering many Call-To-Actions over late summer and fall. We may have many chances to make small changes politically, and maybe even a chance to make a large change for the industry. The remainder of the “Farm Bill” will be an important vehicle to supply some of the sheep priorities, most notably the demand of ASI to provide the sheep industry with a risk protection product from RMA. In the absence of LRP-lamb, our entire industry is void of any risk protection prod uct or futures market. Through the Farm Bill, we plan to legislatively require the RMA to provide a product that will give some level of stability. Our ASI lobbying firm has some examples of at least a starting point for what that product might look like, and this important directive has always been included in the House Ag Committee’s Farm Bill drafts. Thank you to all our producer volunteers. All this potential progress ultimately is successful or unsuccessful based upon the impact of the volunteers throughout the ASI team. Please reach out to your Senators and Representatives – tell them your story and the sheep industry story of lamb and wool. I believe we have created a small wave of momentum in D.C., starting at our ASI fly-in, that needs to be maintained through action and aggressiveness. We have seen the fruits of our labor over the last months with certain Senators and Representatives reaching back to our industry for what they can do to help. We need to fan those flames and keep the momentum moving forward.

4 • Sheep Industry News • sheepusa.org