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Hugh Says Canadian Cattlemen have No one to Blame

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Anonymous

Guest
Looks like old Hugh don't agree with some of you that your not getting a fair price for your product!!! Says you are all in the same boat- cattleman/packer/retailer- and no one is profitting...

Also looks like besides developing some other export markets-- Canada needs an R-CALF....

I think it will get much worse before it gets better--GW/the neocons/the globalists will not stop gutting the dollar- until they can get all Americans and Canadians screaming for the NAU and the "amero"......

Cattle industry clobbered
Sector trying to work together through 'perfect storm' of high costs and profit-sucking loonie

David Finlayson, The Edmonton Journal
Published: 2:20 am
There are no villains as the perfect storm rages through the Alberta beef sector, most industry groups say.

While some ranchers feel they are getting stampeded by people higher up the value chain, everybody is being hurt by a combination of low cattle prices, high feed costs and the strong loonie, says Hugh Lynch-Staunton, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

"We've all been devastated by the rise in the loonie, right through the various sectors from the packers right back to the cow-calf operations," said Lynch-Staunton, who ranches at Lundbreck in southwest Alberta.


We like to find villains at times like this, but there aren't any. The U.S. is our biggest market and they set the price. A year ago the dollar was 85 cents and now it's around $1.07. We've lost 20 per cent right off our gross."

The different groups, from ranchers to packing plants, are trying to work together and not point fingers, Lynch-Staunton said.

He acknowledged it's not easy as each has a different view of the world and different solutions, he said during a break from meetings with industry stakeholders in Calgary.

"We can't do anything about the currency. In time some of the costs should come into line, but we don't know how long that will take."

Kevin Grier, senior beef market analyst at the George Morris Centre, a Guelph, Ont. agri-food think-tank, said usually when one sector's doing well, the others are not. "But I haven't seen anything like this, ever."

Everyone likes to kick the retailers around, and their margins on beef are quite good right now, Grier said.

But it ebbs and flows over the course of a year, and their overall margins have been squeezed over the last two years as consumers shop strictly on price, he said.

Grier said the high loonie has not only hurt exporters, but more beef is coming in from the U.S., where their feed costs are lower.

Canadian packing plants are not running at capacity because of labour shortages, feedlot owners have to bid lower on cattle because of high grain costs, and that hurts the cow-calf operators, he said.

Grier said the Alberta government has been throwing money at the problem as a bridge to better times.

"It could be a long bridge, as it looks like it's going to be a long time before it gets better."

The National Farmers' Union believes what it calls a dysfunctional marketplace is the result of a handful of large corporations dominating the industry.

Cargill, which has a plant in High River, owns half Canada's packing capacity and is able to heavily influence prices at the farm gate and at the wholesesale-retail level, NFU president Stewart Wells said.

"In the mid-1990s, farmers got 60 cents a pound for beef, while packers and retailers took a dollar. Now farmers get 35 cents and packers/retailers get almost $2.50 a pound."

Wells said Cargill's third-quarter profit rose 83 per cent to $917 million compared to the same period in 2006. And the Wichita, Kansas-based company had record profits of $2.3 billion in 2006.

"This profit is coming at the expense of farmers," he said.

Lynch-Staunton said the NFU's position plays well with farmers who want to feel sorry for themselves, but the main driver should be finding a better profit for producers.

Jim Laws, executive director of the Canadian Meat Council, said none of the packers are making money right now.

"The drastic change in the Canadian currency is affecting everybody, but particularly the packers."

Canada exports $1.6 billion worth of beef annually, and $1.1 billion goes to the U.S., so that makes it really tough for exporters."

The packing business is very labour intensive, and they are all facing worker shortages because they can't compete with the oil industry, Laws said.

The industry increased capacity to become more efficient after BSE, but you have to fill that capacity, Laws said.

"There has been some success bringing in temporary foreign workers, but it's difficult work in a cold environment using power saws and knives.

"Plants have to try to become more mechanized."

While the pork processors have started to use robotics to cut carcasses, it hasn't yet reached the beef packers, he added.

The packers do compete for animals at auctions, despite there being only a handful of players, Laws said.

They can only bid so much or they'd go out of business. But they have to go high enough to outbid U.S. buyers and keep the cattle in Canada, he said.

The U.S. plan to open the border to older animals and meat from animals of any age on Nov. 19 will help everybody, Laws said.

Since the BSE crisis of 2003, only animals 30 months and younger have been allowed across the border.

Timing wrong

But a new crackdown on animal feed in Canada comes at the wrong time, he added.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has banned bovine specified risk material (SRM) from all animal feed, pet food and fertilizer, not just in feed for ruminants.

And packing plants must identify SRM to ensure it's removed from the feed system, which adds a cost to each head of cattle.

That's not a requirement south of the border, and hurts our competitiveness even more, Laws said.

The new rules came after the U.S. pointed the finger at a now-bankrupt Rancher's Beef Ltd. of Balzac for being the likely source of bacteria-contaminated meat that made at least 40 people sick earlier this year in eight states.

The feedlots owners, who sit in the middle of the value chain, have not escaped the perfect storm, said Bryan Walton, general manager of Alberta Cattlefeeders Association.

"There's not one thing in our favour right now.

"The high cost of grains and the strength of the Canadian dollar mean it's tough to make a buck."

Bio-inflation

Walton said the growing biofuels industry has pushed up grain prices, but it's not going away so they have to find a way to work with it.

Making biofuels byproducts available as cattle feed, as they do in the U.S., would help, he said.

Walton said the low cattle prices have attracted U.S. feedlot operators to Canadian auctions.

About 600,000 cattle will go south this year, he figures. The last time it was anywhere near that was 2002, when 540,000 were sold to the U.S.

Walton agrees nobody's getting rich right now.

"Competition prevents it at every level. The packers' margins are not great, and look at the problems Loblaw's have had getting ready for the Wal-Mart Supercentres."

It's more important for the various links in the chain to work together to lessen the impact than throw blame around, Walton said. "It surprises me there's not more harmony, but I suppose it's the nature of the business. We each have our unique interests."

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/business/story.html?id=1e95b4a5-d571-4e48-8aa3-475ba653d22f&p=1
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Another example of what you get with this "North American Beef Industry" Just what is it going to take for some to figure out this NA koolaid that the packers and Unioners pour out is bad stuff?

I compared the Euro, Dollar, Yen, and Loonie from a year ago. The Dollar has gone down 10%, the Yen up 2%, the Loonie up 19% and the Euro up 13%.

MR, you do need a R-CALF up there. Those morons that have been leading your cattle industry are just rats following a piper. The guys wailing about the Dollar/Loonie are the same ones fighting our COOL and trying to get the border open. How many times do they have to put their hands in the fire before they learn it burns them? Unbelieveable.....
 

QUESTION

Well-known member
If a common currency would come in i think a "Canamero" would be the best name as it includes all 3 countries. But to devalue the Canadian dollar to the mexican peso i do not think many would go for that up here maybe down there it would go over fine because you have been alot closer to par with them lately :lol2: :cry2: :cowboy:
As far a Canada needing r-calf i thought the group was a US thing kinda like the KKK , there are members in other countries but in countries other than the USA they are seen as nut-jobs. Is membership that low that r-calf usa members are trying to sign up canadians? Or are you guys trying to be like the Hell's Angels and have chapters all over the world reporting back to the US headoffice. :roll:
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Well- Questionable--- apparently you think the Canadian cattle industry is doing plumb fine-- so you keep bowing down to old folks like Hugh (never did trust folks with double last names- either shows a bourgeois arrogance, or total indecidability, or they're guessing at who their papa was :???: :wink: :lol: )....

From what I remember--- your choice of industry leaders hasn't been the greatest historically...Like your buddy that was running Ranchers Beef and telling you that things were doing great--while he was producing tainted product that has cost the cattle and beef industry billions $..... :roll: :wink: :lol: :lol:

Yep-- Canada could use a little R-CALF type influence-- or a few more rKaisers to wean them off the US teat....
 

rkaiser

Well-known member
Good one about the two last names Oldtimer.

As far as Canadian Rcalf ----- We all like to take things and simplify. It makes life easier if we don't look at all aspects of any situation and trust that there is good and bad in everything.

I'd like to kick old Oldtimer in the ass some days and I'm sure he'd like to do the same, but I would also be at his back if he called out Johnny Tyson or some of his mafia.

As for old Hughy - what's his last name - he's a politician and will bend when he sees some advantage. At the moment he is still bending to the packers but when our government finally sees that the solution to saving this industry does not include rules that allow control and manipulation by a few twisted capitalist companies, his bend will change or he will leave his post as a waste of all of our time.

It is simply bullshit to say that the packers are suffering along with the rest of the industry in our country. The agenda that they have employed during this debacle is all about averages and believe me they have averaged out. Not only in profits but in the sheer market control that they have gained that will be even harder to take back now, let alone five years ago when we should have been paying attention.
 

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