Granted, this is an old post, but the point interesting to me is that for longer than my 78 years, ranchers in the USA have bought stocker/feeder calves born in Mexico and Canada to fatten a bit on USA pastures.
It is reasonable to consider that some multi-generation ranchers currently fighting against any imported cattle or beef have had ancestors, if not themselves, participating in that sort of yearling operation in the not always distant past. Very likely those practices enabled the continuation of those ranches to these days.
Beef trade, even that bred, born, and raised this year in the USA has a significant portion of our product going into the world wide market at prices which improve prices we USA ranchers receive for our cattle. One item: the lean beef imported to blend with the excess fat we produce to raise the very high quality/high priced Prime Beef our USA and world wide consumers want. That blended USA/Imported hamburger sells at a lower price that our beef loving, but lower income consumers (both the USA citizens, and worldwide citizens) cannot afford without the imported beef trade.
It does take much more attention and research and learning all we can about the entire beef industry to be able to understand and use all the information to manage our individual herds to successfully participate in that world market. If we as individuals learn it all, we will have to find people, from researchers to marketers and many people in between to guide us....or get out of the way of producers who will !
I don't necessarily like or approve of everything moving so fast, but the world never has stood still for those of us who would prefer a slower pace, has it? There is a lot about the "good old days' I'd like to keep, but it wasn't all roses back then, either. The old outhouse, no running water, central heat.....and, my Dad died of a now minor heart problem age forty, leaving four little kids under age 10, a sister died of cancer at age 13....life goes on and time flies, and not ALL change is all bad!!!
mrj