Cornett: A ‘Hard Cull’ On The Facts

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The following are the opinions of veteran editor Steve Cornett, and are not necessarily those of Drovers or Farm Journal. Links to related articles and opinions are posted at the end of this column. Also of note, on March 10 the Senate passed the Fiscal Year 2022 Omnibus Appropriations package without a provision for mandatory levels of cash cattle trades.

I see an op-ed from R-CALF's Bill Bullard suggesting that those with doubts about the advisability of having the United States government mandate how cattle feeders sell their cattle, or doubts about Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (mCOOL) or anything else he disagrees with are dirty-rotten packer “allies.”*

I plead “not guilty” to the dirty-rotten part. But an ally? Is GM allied with its car dealers? They kind of have to work together, though they’re certainly free to argue over who gets the pully-bone.

Bill, we have different opinions of how to get to the same place. You don’t have to be evil to have a different opinion.

Back when R-Calf was just a gleam in an auctioneer’s eye, I remember a big debate about whether packers should be allowed to own feedlots. Bob Peterson of IBP came before us and urged against allowing his competition to start buying yards. The National Cattlemen’s Association (at the time) refused, as Bill suggests, to seek any such injunction. “Free enterprise” was the winning argument as I recall.

And I recall writing during the debate that NCA’s stance was honorable, but struck me as similar to the jackrabbit voting for coyotes’ right to eat. The consent decree of the 1920’s provided plenty of precedence for forbidding packer ownership of cattle. When you get down to four packers, you’re basically dealing with utility power and if I’m king, I say it’s time to quit governing them like Maria’s Home Cooked Tamales company.

Free enterprise needs some constraints. Open some books. Tap some phones. Grand some juries. Yank some ears. Make them hate each other like Bill hates NCBA. Competition is what makes free enterprise work.

But you can do that without telling cattle feeders how to market their cattle.

On mCOOL, give me a break. My memory on that takes me back to a dinner at an NCBA meeting in Denver. I was with some cattle feeders who were hell-bent to head off the association’s support for that tar-baby of an issue. And I said to them, “these cow guys are serious about this.”

That might be the first time I suggested that if NCBA were going to be the cohesive umbrella group the industry needs, it should require some sort of super majority on these intra-industry matters. If Texas and Iowa can’t agree on something like, oh, say, mCOOL or, for that matter, mandating how cattle are traded, make NCBA neutral and let the states do their own thing.

Yeah. That flew like a Styrofoam golf ball in a headwind.

Now I’ve got to say something I shouldn’t say.  I love these cow politicians. I like to watch them work each other. I’d rather do an NCBA marketing committee meeting than a NASCAR race. But, I daresay that testosterone plays a bigger role at the former than at the latter.

All these boys are alpha boys back home. And if you get them in a room negotiating, it’s like throwing rocks at rocks. Considerable sparks and then finally one cracks. Congenially, almost always. But not on mCOOL.

I believe it was at that meeting that Steve Munday was Executive hoo-hah at Texas and Southwestern—the cow outfit, of which I have been a card carrying member forever. He had a caucus of other cow-calf affiliates gathering and he met me at the door and told me I couldn’t come in. He was afraid I would tell the cattle feeders some secret stuff about how they planned to get mCOOL approved by the association. (Reporters are the only betas at these gatherings. So I slunk off.)**

And Steve and I were friends in college. Been friends for 50 years. Still are.

Anyhow, the feeders—who were protecting their Mexican feeder calves, of course, won the day. Zip-zap, R-CALF splintered off and quickly learned to use the new internet to amass a group of like-thinkers into a formidable opposition for just about ANYthing NCBA wants to do. I’ve got friends who are members and we get along fine. Just disagree on the matters We Do Not Mention.

I’ve just got to say that I thought then and think now that mCOOL should have been a non-issue. Flip a damn coin if you feel so strong about it. When R-CALF got it passed, it made no difference. Prices were higher for a while, but imports increased, making it impossible to separate cause and effect. I am very unconvinced that consumers, no matter how many polls you show me, are going to pay extra for US-labeled beef. They might, in fact, be more inclined to prefer the “hecho en Mexico” brand. Especially in the modern world. Have you noticed the price of meat goats these days?

Plus, if R-CALF were serious about the issue, they’d spend all that energy and lawyer money developing a grown-in-America brand which would be a fine start on one of those animal-ID enabled branding programs the sustainability people talk about. If consumers really want US ID, one could probably use a brand like that to get a new packing plant started. But I guess if you believe the government is the answer to all your problems…

I wandered far afield that time. Reason I sat down here was to argue that just hating packers is not enough reason to get out of bed. We want them to be honest. We want them to compete buying cattle. We want them to compete selling beef. The role of government should be making sure they aren’t playing pinky-grab in the meat case.

Bill, bless his heart, has built a formidable group. So, I see Drovers has run his op-ed. Good. But he has culled the facts pretty hard. He has no evidence that land grant economists nudge their numbers because their schools are funded by “packers and their allies.” He cites studies he likes and ignores those he doesn’t. He talks about the recent spike in packer margins—which have recently narrowed considerably--as if they happened in a covid-free world.

Reminds me of my brother Dave’s freshman year in college. We were rooming together and I came home one day and he had bought like 10 magazine subscriptions from some girl at the door. I said, “we can hardly afford beer. What are you doing buying magazines?” And he said, “it’s only $X a month!” (He didn’t say the “!.” I inferred it.) And I said, “Dave. That’s $12x a year.” And he said, “Oh. She didn’t mention that.” ***

That’s salesmanship is what that is.

The reason I like the NCBA meetings is the back and forth. Sit through a marketing committee debate on an intra-industry issue and you’ll hear both sides. You’ll hear arguments you hadn’t thought about and maybe change your mind. (At least I’ve done that. But maybe that’s the Beta in me.) What comes out later—the stuff pointing out problems with mCOOL or mandates—is one sided. But that’s how teams work. Reach consensus and tell the staff what to do.

I don’t get that feeling with R-CALF. Seems to me you guys go in with your minds made up. And your meetings are like a FOX or MSNBC show: designed to make you agree with yourself.

*He didn’t really say the “dirty rotten” part. I just inferred it. Because I think he insinuated it. But I might be wrong. He may have meant “low down.”

**Not counting the farm radio guys with the melodious voices who can ask questions that sound like they’re dictating cubits.           

***Brother Dave had a naïve side to him. We went to grade school in Wildorado, TX. Five in my class, three in his. We had no TV for much of those years. And certainly no internet.

Related articles:

Packers and Allies Urge Congress to Do Nothing in Face of Broken Markets

Speer: Policy Makers Should Just Leave Well Enough Alone

Speer: Is Fair What We Really Want?

Uhl: The quest to improve cattle markets

Speer: Business First, Market Second

Cornett: 'What Does the End of Beef Mean for Our Sense of Self?'

Cornett: Cattle Markets Could See ‘Techtonic Shifts’

Cornett: Insights From 'A Yankee' Feeder

Cornett: Charity Markets

Cornett: Stewardship and Sustainability Will Influence Price Discovery

 

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