Ballard: Imported Beef Not the Full Solution

October 23, 2025

October 23, 2022 — On the heels of President Trump’s comments about importing Argentinian beef and, most recently his claim of saving the American rancher, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a plan to fortify the American beef industry by strengthening ranchers, rebuilding capacity, and lowering costs for consumers. 

Tri State Livestock News editor and North Dakota rancher Carrie Stadheim sat down with Utah rancher and federal lands attorney Hayden Ballard in the hours after he met again with Rollins and high-ranking cabinet members Secretary of the Interior Doug Bergum, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, and administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler and helped inform Rollins’ white paper plan to fortify the beef industry.

“The general message from us was we need to restore confidence in our domestic producers and we need to restore confidence in the markets but we also need to restore confidence for our federal land grazers that they do have a future raising cattle on these allotments,” Ballard said. “To do that we need…well, there’s several things we need, but…to do that, importing beef is not the answer. We already import far more than we should, in my humble opinion so just increasing imports isn’t going to solve any problems.”

The priorities that stemmed from conversations with ranchers include endangered species reforms, enhanced disaster relief, increased grazing access, increased access to capital, affordable risk management tools, increased marketing options and transparency, and boosting domestic and international demand to help end the boom/bust cycle that has defined past markets.

The full plan is available at: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USDA%20Beef%20Industry%20Plan%20White%20Paper.pdf

Source: Rachel Gabel, The Fence Post Magazine