In an era when agriculture often feels fractured by competing priorities, regional differences, and long-standing policy disagreements, the Common Ground Coalition has emerged in an effort to bring the industry together around shared concerns that matter most to producers on the ground. At its core, the coalition is rooted in the belief that while agriculture may not agree on everything, it agrees on far more than it sometimes acknowledges, and that unity, rather than division, is essential to preserving rural America and the nation’s food security.

The Common Ground Coalition did not begin as a formal organization with a strategic plan or political ambitions. Instead, it grew out of frustration, concern, and a deep sense of responsibility felt by people who live and work in production agriculture every day. Its roots trace back roughly five years, when leaders from across the livestock industry gathered to confront an uncomfortable reality. According to Joe Goggins, one of the coalition’s founding voices, the meeting marked a turning point. “Basically, it was all kind of derived from the meeting we had five years ago,” Joe states. “We brought together all the industry groups and tried to come up with some common ground ideas that would help grassroots America.”

At the heart of that meeting was a shared recognition that the industry had become its own worst enemy in many respects. Years of infighting among organizations had consumed energy that might otherwise have gone toward securing policies to help producers. As Joe puts it, “There was so much fighting within this industry amongst groups, and it just got to the point where we’re not getting anything positive for policy, especially that deals with grassroots America.”

That frustration was not theoretical. It was grounded in what people were seeing unfold across the countryside. Auction market owners, seedstock producers, and cattlemen from every corner of the country were watching the same trends take shape. “The common theme over the last four or five years, if you sit around these boardroom tables at the LMA and talk to different auction market owners, regardless of what region of the United States they live in, is the amount of dispersion that we’re all having,” Joe says. “The amount of total cow herds and the amount of total flocks of sheep that we’re selling, and the amount of land that we’re losing out of food production to things like urban development or recreation.” While some degree of change is inevitable, Joe emphasized that agriculture cannot afford to accept these losses without resistance. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop that totally,” he states, “but we have got to push back.”

For rural communities, the consequences of inaction are severe. Producers are the backbone of rural America. “The lifeblood, the gas that keeps the tank full for all of us along Main Street rural America, regardless of if you’re the grocery store, the bar, the auction market, the hardware store, is the producer—we need producers, we need people on the land, and we’re losing them,” Joe emphasizes.

That sense of urgency became the coalition’s foundation. The Common Ground Coalition began to take shape as leaders looked for a way to bring producers together rather than pull them further apart. Early momentum came when the Montana Stockgrowers Association stepped up and hosted a series of producer profitability meetings across the state. Joe was quick to credit Montana for its leadership. “The Montana Stock Growers, who I give big kudos to, were the first state affiliate cattlemen’s group that really took this thing by the horns,” he says. Those meetings proved to be a catalyst. Other cattlemen’s groups across the country, from California and Wyoming to Iowa, Wisconsin, Alabama, and Kansas, followed Montana’s lead. Producers gathered to talk candidly about what was working, what was not, and what was pushing people out of the business. What emerged from those discussions was a remarkable level of consistency. “I don’t care if I was in Alabama, if I was in California, if I was in Montana, or if I was in Missouri,” Joe says, “there’s three things that really hinder people from wanting to do this in this industry and in production agriculture.”

Those three obstacles—access to land, access to capital, and access to labor—cut across geography, operation size, and production system. “Those are the three major hurdles of why people are getting out and why people are not wanting to get in,” Joe states. “The access to capital is too tough. Access to land is too tough. The labor thing that we’re fighting is too tough.” 

The implications of those barriers extend far beyond individual operations. There’s also deep concern about the long-term trajectory of the national cow herd. “I don’t think we ever build this cow herd back to 32, 33 million as we’ve had before,” Joe says. “I just hope and pray we can keep it to 28, 29 million where it’s at now.” The stakes, he added, are nothing less than national food security. Reaching much lower than that can start to compromise our nation’s food independence or food security. 

What followed these producer meetings was a deliberate and, in many ways, unconventional step. Leaders associated with the Livestock Marketing Association decided to bring together a diverse group of individuals from across the beef supply chain for a coalition meeting. Participants were selected not to represent organizations, but to reflect a cross-section of production agriculture. As Joe explains, the intent was to focus on people rather than politics. “We’re going to pick 40 names or so out of these 70 that got submitted, and we’re going to invite them in, and we’re going to have us a coalition meeting, a round table meeting,” he states.

The group included cow-calf producers, feedlot owners, representatives from packing companies, auction market owners, and individuals from academia. The expectation going in was modest. “I thought if we got one thing that we could agree upon, it would be a miracle,” Joe admits. “But we got five.”

Those five areas of agreement became the backbone of the Common Ground Coalition’s mission. They focused on achieving and maintaining a friendly tax policy, improving livestock risk management tools, fixing labor challenges through reforms such as updates to the H-2A program, increasing flexibility for livestock transportation, and creating meaningful support for young and emerging producers. Equally important was what the coalition chose not to do. “The only rules we had were we’re not going to talk about anything that we know that we have proven that we have no unification on,” Joe says. Divisive issues that had long splintered the industry were intentionally set aside in favor of securing achievable wins.

The coalition’s emphasis on unity reached a defining moment during an October meeting in Washington, D.C., hosted by Montana Senator Tim Sheehy. Unlike traditional fly-ins, where producers often meet briefly with staff members, this meeting brought coalition members together with policymakers themselves. “We had the opportunity to sit down around a table for two and a half hours with 15 senators,” Joe says. “They didn’t move. They sat there for two and a half hours and absolutely engaged.”

The meeting included senators and members of Congress from both parties. The significance of the Washington, D.C. meeting was underscored by the level of leadership in the room. Lawmakers in attendance included Secretary of Agriculture Rollins; Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT); Sen. John Boozman (R-AR); Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT); Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE); Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA-13); Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY-At Large); Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND); Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS); Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY); Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL-01); Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE); Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID); and Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH-02). Their presence reflected broad, bipartisan engagement around issues critical to rural America and U.S. food security. Joe described the experience as unprecedented. “You could tell they would much rather hear from individuals from across the ag sector that really have skin in the game,” he says. “It was amazing.”

Senator Sheehy opened the meeting with a message that resonated deeply. “If there’s one thing I know for sure,” Sheehy stated, according to Joe, “we have to make it our number one priority that we make policy in D.C. that will assure that we preserve our food independence in this country.” Sheehy went on to reference civilizations throughout history that collapsed after losing the ability to feed their people, emphasizing that we cannot allow that here in America and that it’s our number one priority to ensure we keep our food independence. 

Perhaps the most powerful symbol of the coalition’s impact came when members presented lawmakers with a petition signed by more than 11,000 producers from all across America. It included signatures from all 50 states, D.C., and even 3 provinces in Canada. “When we handed that book around to those senators, and it was a big, thick book, it blew their mind,” Joe states. “Now that’s called unification.”

“I’m telling you, it’s the meeting the beef industry has been needing to have,” Joe adds. Since that meeting, the federal government has been making groups come together. The Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Trade, and the Secretary of Agriculture have now called all these industry groups to come together for some meetings, focusing on what they can do to help.

In addition to the impact of that meeting, the coalition has already scored concrete policy wins since its founding. One of the most significant was the permanence of key tax provisions originally enacted as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which were extended beyond their scheduled sunset at the end of 2025 through legislation signed on July 4, 2025. Those provisions include preservation of the federal transfer tax lifetime exemption amounts, retention of step-up in basis under section 1014 of the tax code, a return to 100 percent bonus depreciation under section 168, continued expanded application of section 179 expensing, and maintenance of the qualified business income deduction under section 199A, each of which provides financial stability and planning certainty for family farms and ranches.

The permanent increase of the federal transfer tax lifetime exemption to $15 million per individual and $30 million per married couple, indexed for inflation, prevents a drastic reduction that would otherwise have occurred and helps protect generational land and operations. Bonus depreciation returning to 100 percent improves liquidity and cash flow for on-farm investments, and retaining step-up in basis eases potential capital gains taxes for heirs, helping keep operations intact across generations. Making the expanded section 179 expensing limit permanent allows producers to more immediately deduct the cost of essential equipment, providing real-world cash-flow benefits that support reinvestment and growth. These achievements reflect not just advocacy, but tangible results that directly affect producers’ ability to plan, invest, and pass their operations on to the next generation.

The coalition has also seen progress in livestock risk management programs. Updates to the USDA’s Livestock Risk Protection (LRP) program now include higher subsidy levels, broader coverage options including forward contract protection, and expanded risk tools such as unborn calf and drought hardship provisions, all of which make risk management tools more accessible and effective for producers.

The effect of the coalition’s efforts continues to ripple outward. Agriculture is now firmly on the radar of policymakers. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith later told Joe, “Every time I walk onto the Senate floor now, my friends, my colleagues within the Senate give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. They want to know, is the cattle market up or is the cattle market down?”

For Joe, the deeper value of the Common Ground Coalition lies in what it represents culturally within agriculture. “It proved to the industry, it proved especially to these policy makers, the value of coming together on a few things and agreeing on a few things and getting some wins,” he expresses. The coalition has also brought hope back into the conversation, particularly for producers who feel disconnected from national organizations. “Most of these people don’t belong to or are affiliated with any industry group,” Joe states. “But they want some hope.”

That hope, he believes, must be backed by action. “If we don’t do that, the bigger ones are going to get bigger, and we’re going to lose these smaller producers,” Joe said. “Somebody has got to stand up and lead for these smaller producers.”

At its core, the coalition is about ownership, opportunity, and continuity. In an industry built on independence, the Common Ground Coalition is proving that unity may be the most powerful tool agriculture has to secure its future.

To learn more or join the movement yourself, visit commongroundcoalition.net.