Texas Cattle Country; Net Beef Sales Up
**A livestock economist says Hurricane Harvey has impacted a major cattle producing area of Texas.
David Anderson with Texas A&M says 54 Texas counties have been declared disaster areas, and that those 54 counties have, conservatively, 1.2 million beef cows, which is 27 percent of Texas’ total beef cow inventory.”
He tells Brownfield the storm came on quickly and producers had to rush to move cattle to higher ground.
**Speaking to a crowd in Springfield, Missouri last week, President Trump said the first overhaul of the tax code in three decades should result in a one-page tax return for most Americans, while declaring tax reform is the foundation of job growth.
In a separate statement, Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue said the estate tax, a bugaboo of the farm sector, should be part of an overhaul expected to be a Republican priority in Congress this fall.
Elimination of the estate tax is a long-sought goal of farm groups that say it inhibits transfer of land to a new generation of family farmers. The current tax does not apply to individual estates of less than $5.49 million, or $11 million for a married couple.
**The USDA reports net beef sales for the week ending August 24th were a new marketing year high at 25,200 tons, an increase of 52% from the prior week and up 76% from the 4-week average.
Top buyers were South Korea, Hong Kong, Egypt, Japan, and Taiwan.