Second class citizens?

[kato]

All the more reason to get out there and get your name on a petition! It's like we don't exist.

From Harry Siemens... http://www.siemenssays.com/blog/1270.html

Cattle producers ignored
Posted on July 13, 2010, 8:19 am, by Harry Siemens
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Cattle producers were excluded from the federal-provincial Excess Moisture Program announced as an AgriRecovery initiative.

The day of the $30 an acre announcement, the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association issued a news release saying it expected governments to include standing pasture and hay lands that had been flooded. However, only annual cropland is included.

Yesterday, the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association issued a news release saying many of its members are experiencing a terrible time due to extreme flooding of hay and pasture. The MCPA is disappointed that the relief package doesn’t address the needs of beef producers. It continues to monitor the situation and work with government on a response.

Governments always seem to respond more generously and decisively to problems in the crops sector. Grain producers already have better safety nets than livestock producers, specifically crop insurance. Yet governments came out with an additional flood program for crops without any mention of action for livestock producers facing similar problems.

It’s easy to see why some cattle producers feel like second class citizens.

[mcfarms]

WOW!!!! now you need a program to buy a ladder to see the cows in all the grass? If the Feds bite you could put the form in the drought program envelope and save postage.
MY hays getting rained on tonight maybe the taxpayer should compensate me for it.....what a sad industry this is sometimes.

[T.N.T.]

I agree with you mcfarms,what a sad industry this is sometimes,more like embarassing.I got 600 acres cut so far,along with getting stuck quite a few times.Me and the boys decided to start baling the black swaths off the fields,even though the bales were testing 48% moisture.My plan is go for the second cut and hopefully get some decent weather to put it up.Now they want me as a cattleman to lower my standards and whine like a grain farmer for a handout,and if i don't get a payout cry you are treating me like a second class citizen.Well i only managed to get 4000acres of my 7000 acres seeded,but as wet as it has been this year i'm happy i got that much seeded and i can survive just fine with out a hand out.I consider myself a cattleman even though i make a lot more money growing grain then i do with my 600 cows,so don't embarass me by screaming second class citizen,just so we get a payment also.Sorry for the long rant,but being told i'm a second class citizen because i'm not whinning or getting a payment just makes me sick!!!

[kato]

Sad industry? Embarrassing?

Sad "situation" maybe. I for one am not embarrassed at our industry. Canadian cattle producers have demonstrated over the past 7 years that they are some of the most resourceful people you will ever find. Just to still be standing in this business after what's been going on is an accomplishment. We don't all have large grain farms to supplement our large cow herds. Many people are totally dependent on cattle, and to see them still here and doing there best to keep Canadian beef in existence makes me proud, not embarrassed.

I think it speaks to the level of frustration out there right now. For many years now, as long as anyone can remember, cattle producers in this country have been extremely proud of the fact that they could get along just fine thank you without the kind of assistance that other sectors of agriculture get. It's something we always believed too.

Sorry guys, but things have changed. I don't know if you've noticed, but this industry, at least in our province is just one small disaster away from breaking completely. After the past 7 years, there is no money in anyone's bank account to even pay the existing bills, let alone come up with enough to cover unexpected disasters. Maybe we've been reduced to asking for help like grain farmer's do because the cattle business has finally had the profit sucked out of it? Remember when we used to make a living raising cattle? It's been a while.

It's good to hear that you have the resources to weather a bad year, but in this province those who have those resources are becoming an endangered species.

There is only so much financial difficulty that one individual can absorb before something has to give.

Working on this petition project of ours, I've been hearing first hand some absolutely heart breaking stories. In Manitoba, other than one small corner of the province, there are no oil jobs here. There is lots of land here that can only raise cattle, and other options do not exist. There are already miles of empty pastures standing. I know people who's pastures are so wet that cattle have nowhere to lie down, and pastures where you cannot see the TOP of the fenceposts! This is not the first flooding we've had either, it's the third straight year in a row. There are many people who have put in no crops at all, and will harvest no hay, and will be out of farming entirely before year's end.

Not everyone is flooded out, but then again not everyone is asking for help. Disaster money is just that, it's for disasters. It's only for those who are hurt. It's not welfare.

If cattle producers cannot find any compassion for other producers who have been less fortunate in their circumstances, we're in deeper trouble than we think.

end of rant....

[mcfarms]

Kato
Ever hear of a fellow named Darwin, you either evolve or you die off it's been going on for more than a couple years. And it applies to business as well as it applies to nature.

[mcfarms]

PS

the industry has been "just one disaster away" for all my life it seems yet land prices keep going up up up something doesn't compute.

[grassfarmer]

I kind of agree with TNT and mcfarms BUT I hope you guys refused to accept ANY of the program money that has been offered in recent years - the BSE compensation programs, drought, flood relief, CAIS, AGRI-STABILITY etc. You can't have it both ways you are either for or against AG support programs period.
I participate in programs while lobbying for the change that would see Government act to cure the problem not apply band-aid temporary fixes.

[mcfarms]

Properly designed and bankable programs, crop ins etc I can live with, Ad hoc ,hit some ,miss some programs have never worked well in the past nor will they now or in the future.

[kato]

Exactly. There's a class action settlement that could also be signed off of. I'm sure someone else could put it to good use.

As long as the food system in this country is set up that the raw materials must be grown for less than cost, then assistance is a necessary evil. I don't like getting help from the government any more than you do, but if the option is to just stand back and let the corporations have 100% control of the food supply in this country, or worse yet, have this country depend on imports for it's food supply, I'll take the cheque.

Actually, the cattle industry has not been one disaster away from collapse all my life, but maybe I'm older than you are. I remember much better days, and lots of them.

As for Darwin....... We have a friend who has a relative raising cattle north of the Duck Mountains in Manitoba. He has marginal land, he has forest and bush, he has rocks, and he has a short growing season. He can also raise excellent cattle on this land. It is suited to nothing else. He's in his 50's. The nearest large population center is about 8 hours away. There is no work to be had.

How is he supposed to "evolve"? He's already getting significant production from otherwise unproductive land. He's producing beef, where otherwise there would be nothing but scrub and bears.

Does he start selling beef direct to neighbours who don't need it? Does he drive hours and hours to an off farm job? Does he just walk off and let the land go back to the wild, leaving that much food production vanish into thin air, never to return? Or does he get a bit of help now, and when market conditions improve, go back to doing what he and his land do best?

Evolution is fine and dandy, but the big picture needs to be seen here.

There are two truths that need to be kept in mind.

People who leave this business do not come back.

Bad times don't last forever.

When better times come back it would be a sad thing to have to say that there is no one left to produce beef, because no one wanted to make the effort to try and keep the infrastructure it all depends on.

[mcfarms]

Properly designed and bankable programs, crop ins etc I can live with, Ad hoc ,hit some ,miss some programs have never worked well in the past nor will they now or in the future.

[kato]

Properly designed and bankable. Now that's the million dollar question. Cattle producers have no access to such a program.

But grain growers do. They have crop insurance, which is as close to predictable as it is possible to get.

Yet in this case, grain growers get help, and cattle producers don't, even though they are all standing in the same water, losing money, and watching their pastures and hayfields drown.

[ProFarmer]

You should have come to realize that grain farmers only work 2 months of the year and whine for the rest either in canada or in their winter getaway down south. Cattle farmers are to busy trying to produce our product for nothing for an uncaring consumer who is willing to go offshore in a heartbeat if they can't get their food from Safeway..

[burnt]

"mcfarms Reply posted Jul 14, 2010:13 Kato
Ever hear of a fellow named Darwin, you either evolve or you die off it's been going on for more than a couple years. And it applies to business as well as it applies to nature."

mcfarms - it will be interesting to see how long a person can maintain that cavalier attitude (based on a highly doubtful theory, by the way) when it's their neck on the chopping block.

[mcfarms]

Burnt
Don't know I'll let you know when it happens? But based on the fact we've been here for over 100 years and we've never been stronger or more financially secure than we are right now you might have to wait a while.

Read my posting on the commodity side about why these ad hoc programs are going to hurt us all in the long run and then tell me how I should think.
I am adamantly against ad hoc farm support programs of any type as it allows what are supposed to be the properly designed programs to escape scrutiny and improvement.

[grassfarmer]

I kind of understand your logic mcfarms but it appears to be skewed. You talk of Darwinism - evolution with survival of the fittest - but with Government help. You still support programs but like to pick and choose which you like which you don't.
The starting point of this thread was Kato posting a Siemans essay based on what the Saskatchewan Cattle organisation was asking for. That is the part that annoys me. These commodity organisations boast like you that they are all about free enterprise and don't want the Government involved yet are happy to be involved in negotiating "acceptable programs" as part of their mandate. Unfortunately organisations like ABP are so stupid they fought tooth and nail to raise the Agristability cap per business from $500,000 to $4 million and are then surprised when there are not enough funds to go around so then go to Government on bended knee asking for Ad Hoc programs to help producers get through.
Why don't they, or you, instead go after fixing the real problems - the captive supply, the retail and packer concentration, the ineffective competition bureau? If you did that you wouldn't need programs period. Then you could truly claim to be free market, non subsidised producers. That is what I support not rhetoric about free market solutions that are anything but.