Who will pay?

[cowman]

Countryguy: The only problem with trying to hold food off the market is there is a whole world hammering on our door trying to get in. If you hold your cattle off the market in comes the meat from South America or Oceania! The same thing with grain. Just look what happened when the grain farmers tried holding out for higher barley prices last fall? In came the subsidized corn! The grain farmer had just come through some pretty hard times and needed that price to go high to offset the yield losses. Instead they were beat down by a blatantly subsidized product!
Our government is not interested in having higher food prices! Our whole economy is built on cheap food and cheap labour! That's how the corporations get rich...and they do call the shots my friend!

[rusty1]

Yep! You can pour all the sentiment in the world into who and what we anre and what we deserve. But at the end of the day all we are is a commodity. So all we can do is figure out how to work within the system sharpen our tools and be more competitive. I've said it before. You need 1 of two things to be sucessful, to be significant or scarce, and if you have both then you really have a leg up on the rest.
Sharpen your tools:
The profitability within a given cow heard is greater than between herds. I've seen ADG range from 7 lbs. per day to zero within the same one-iron calves. So untill we as producers get serious about consistancey and put into practice some tools to improve our product we shant be looking for handouts.

[rsomer]

"why should he [Rutherford],as a taxpayer, be responsible for bailing out cattlemen.

I see only one basic role of national government, that being defense of the country and its citizens. Canada has a proud military history. But one country can attack another country without using bombs and tanks. Countries can be attacked economically. Once the science indicated that our beef was safe after successful testing found a single case of BSE , once the issue became political, Canada was being attacked.

Canada and Canada’s beef industry is being attacked by the United States who are seeking to destroy our domestic beef industry while gaining a tactical advantage for their own producers and domestic beef industry. After the United States has sufficiently weakened the economic defenses of our beef industry they will come in and claim even more sectors of the beef economy as their own. The war will be won, and the Canadian beef producer will be defeated.

The proper role of the Canadian government is to defend the country by using whatever means are available. Yes there is a cost to the taxpayer for this defense. But most would agree that the government needs to provide direct logistical support to its soldiers, in this case the beef producers of this country. Without this support many units will be lost.

Yes there are weak kneed, namby pamby left leaning liberals in this country who don’t have the balls to stand up for the defense of Canada because it might cost them a tax dollar. Some will even say the fight isn’t worth it or the fight is too hard or we have already lost. But the rest of the nation will proudly stand up for Canada and continue to fight the good fight for the sake of the industry and the good of the country.

How’s that for a rant?

[countryguy]

I still think that if we withheld product from the market even for a short time(2-4 weeks) we could have a great impact.Just think of all the people down the line that would be affected.Truckers,elevators,railways,processors,cr ushers,etc would all be at a standstill.Heck,there may not even be bread on the shelf at the grocery store.They would not have time to find replacement supply and surely everyone could go a couple weeks without cashflow.

[Bruce14]

Who will pay?

Excellent rant rsomer. In an earlier post you mentioned Sheila and the Liberals. It was disheartening yesterday that when the rally was held in Ottawa in conjunction with the Western Cattle Drive truck arriving that there was not a single rep. from the Liberal gov't to address the people.

I suppose they were busy ensuring Svend's gay anti-hate bill passed. (Not that I am opposed to any anti-hate legislation but we can surely see where this govenments priorities are).

At least the day before there was a few Liberals that stood and voted with their conscience and against the "namby pamby" party line.

Wouldn't it be great if the "right" (C.A. and P.C.'s) actually did unite?

[Bruce14]

Excellent rant rsomer. In an earlier post you mentioned Sheila and the Liberals. It was disheartening yesterday that when the rally was held in Ottawa in conjunction with the Western Cattle Drive truck arriving that there was not a single rep. from the Liberal gov't to address the people.

I suppose they were busy ensuring Svend's gay anti-hate bill passed. (Not that I am opposed to any anti-hate legislation but we can surely see where this govenments priorities are).

At least the day before there was a few Liberals that stood and voted with their conscience and against the "namby pamby" party line.

Wouldn't it be great if the "right" (C.A. and P.C.'s) actually did unite?

[GodLovesTheUSA]

I have noticed some anti American sentiments on this forum. While the stupidity of these comments does not warrant a response, I will make a brief comment. You people feel that this (BSE problem) was planned and that there is a conspiracy against your industry. Why do people in Canada not understand economics.
The reality of the situation is that your own population is too small to handle the production off of your vast land base. This means that you are dependant on outside countries to buy your produce.
That is reality.
Either eat more of your own beef or export the excess. Once you have to export the product you loose control, unless there is a large demand for the product. What I really want to say is that you and your homo loving country has been blessed big time by the God Fearing nation of the United States of America. There reason your beef prices have dropped is not because of a conspiracy here, but rather because you were unfortunate enough to have BSE case in your national herd. Once you lost the blessing of USA dollars buying your beef, the price drops. Big Time.

I have been following what you fools up there have been doing and maybe you should start thinking about returning to God's values. God's hand of blessing will be lifted unless you fools start deciding what is right and wrong. This does not relate to the cattle issue right now-- but rather in general to what is happening in Canada. I am actively involved here in the USA in trying to bring our country to its senses and knowing right from wrong. We have enough to worry about ourselves. I do not need to help you with your stupidity. The USA itself suffers from economic hardships caused by misguided leadership etc.
But this much is true.
If the USA and Canada does not return to honoring God in our country and homes we will start to see some real negative changes. Changes that we are already seeing.

[ValueChainFX]

Godlovestheusa
I would like to comment on this only because you obviously have a challenge with people in general. These forums are meant to express who we are and how we feel and recieve some feed back from others to help us find common ground. We are all people of the land and therefore have our own sense of personal belief. Most of us do believe in the same things you do I'm sure. However, many of us also believe that our free speech isn't really free in that our beliefs have cost each of us at one point in life time or another. We have done as much Canadian political bashing as American and if you feel the issues surrounding this BSE thing are strictly based on science I would think you probably need to review the issue from start to finish. You said "The USA itself suffers from economic hardships caused by misguided leadership etc." Well you can take out USA and add Canada and I'm sure not one of us in these forums would disagree. For that matter almost every country around the world could go into that USA spot.

We don't hate you as country or our leaders as people, we just don't agree with the way some of the issues are handled! Without discussion on how we at the industry level feel, how would any of us reach a conclusion as to what we as individuals can do to correct the challenge.

Given the passion in your opinion, I for one support you in expressing your thoughts and feelings.

[GodLovesTheUSA]

I was just thinking how everything is going to work out for the Canadian Beef industry. A lot of the gays and lesbians couples that we have will want to move to Canada to enjoy the liberal freedoms that you have in your "free" society. Well, gays and lesbians eat beef, or at least some of them do. I can just see it now. Male couples walking down the streets of Calgary, holding hands, kissing and sharing a hamburger made from Canadian beef. What a pretty picture.

[jensend]

do i detect a latent issue that should be dealt with?

[cowman]

Is this guy for real? Do you ever wonder how an idiot like Bush got elected?
We are one people. We too are North Americans! Hopefully we aren't all dingbats like "God loves the Usa!"
That's scary!

[jensend]

maybe God loves places besides the USA