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Some things don't change much

Texan

Well-known member
The Livestock Weekly out of San Angelo, Texas has been around since 1949 and is dedicated to stockmen and the markets they depend on. It's a family-owned publication where you can call and talk to the publisher personally. Except you just might find out that he has gone to the ranch for the rest of the day because they're also ranch people.

They publish a column every week that is just a reprint of an editorial column from the early days of the paper. Below is a reprint of Stanley Frank's column from April 15, 1965.

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The first ranch-country hearing by the National Commission on Food Marketing was held April 1-3 in Cheyenne and another is scheduled April 21-22 in Fort Worth. At the Cheyenne session the commission, studying cattle and sheep marketing practices and packers’ feedlot operations, heard much that has been said over and over again: Ranchers think they’re being unduly punished by chain stores and packers who have been getting rich while the stockmen were losing money; consumers have been buying food at unreasonably low prices compared with returns from livestock production.

There were also complaints that the market news service is inadequate or even harmful to the livestock producer.

Terminal market spokesmen brought up the old gripe that country buying lessens competition because sellers base asking prices on terminal market quotations while terminal markets no longer get the top classes of livestock.

Packers’ engagement in feedlot operations was attacked with the argument that when a packer has cattle on feed, he doesn’t have to compete in the market for fat cattle owned by producers.

According to press reporters, there weren’t many bona fide ranchers at the hearing. Most of the so-called “spokesmen” for producers seemed to think the government needs to do something to protect the rancher and feeder. One or two feedlot operators expressed satisfaction with the present system of marketing.

The overriding question which was unanswered by this meeting, and which probably will remain unanswered at future sessions, is this: What can the federal government do for the livestock producer and feeder that they can’t do better for themselves?

Should the government prohibit packers from owning any cattle in any feedlot?

Should owners of terminal markets be favored by a federal law requiring you and me to do business with them rather than at a local auction or even an order buyer who comes to our ranch or feedlot?

Should the USDA be granted enough money to have a market news man present at every livestock trade, and even tell the seller what he should take for his livestock?

If some of these ideas seem ridiculous, they will seems less so if you’ll merely take some of the pleas entered by some of the men at Cheyenne and project them to the logical development suggested by bureaucratic actions in the past.

Believe it or not, there were complaints at Cheyenne against growth of commercial feedlots. Not just growth of huge food chains or packing plants, but feedlots as well. There were also protests against great ranching enterprises.

Let us suppose this were carried on a little further, and you could feed only so many cattle, or operate only so many sections of land. Millions of consumers think every rancher is a wealthy man. Hordes of people consider a $50,000 investment certain proof that the investor is rich and getting richer; ranchers know, and probably so do members of the commission, that a $50,000 investment in raising or feeding cattle does well to afford the investor as much net return as he could make working in a gas station.

Justice Phil S. Gibson, chairman of the commission, said at Cheyenne: “We are in search of facts as to how the food industry is organized and how it operates — facts that will help us to understand what has occurred and what is occurring in the food industry. We intend to produce as thorough and detailed a study as time available to us permits, and we intend to discharge our duties objectively.”

Sen. Roman L. Hruska, Nebraska Republican, is quoted in the National Provisioner as saying, “unfounded statements or rumors, however sincerely declared, furnish no desirable foundation for action...nor does the posing of any question, however, skillfully or eloquently phrased, constitute either an accusation or basis for an inference against anyone or anything.”

It is hoped that many ranchmen and feedlot operators will be present at the Fort Worth hearing, and that so-called “spokesmen” for cattle and sheep producers will present facts the commission needs to know.

There will undoubtedly be plenty of valid testimony as to the hardships suffered by ranchers and feeders in recent years. But will all the facts be honestly presented?

Will cattlemen admit they’ve raised and fed so much beef that the buying side has been able to exert immense pressure on the market?

Will ranchers refrain from asking the federal government for additional controls, restrictions, subsidies and added government service that will merely result in bigger federal spending without actually helping either the producer or consumer?

The commission would probably be more impressed by stockmen’s admission that they’ve already been helped by the federal government than by pleas for more help. And stockmen should be wary of phony presentations by so-called “leaders” or “spokesmen” who make an excellent living by running from livestock meetings to Washington at the expense of stockmen.

Certainly there’s a big spread between the price of cattle at the ranch or feedlot and the price of steak at the grocery store. But it is hard to see how this is going to be helped by forcing fed cattle to sell on the Denver yards rather than at the feeder’s own pens.

Maybe before it’s over, the commission will at least uncover the real economics of the food business. Perhaps ranchers will find that taxes and labor unions, rather than chain stores, packers, country cattle buyers, or operators of huge feedlots and ranches, have done most to widen the spread between the prices they receive and the prices consumers pay for beef. —(S.F. 04/15/65)



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