Impressive crops?

[15444]

Rpkaiser:

You raise a very valid point when you talk about slow release antibiotics and how they may affect the immune system. My neighbour, whom visited with me for some time tonight, reflected on a very interesting story that occured quite a few years ago.

We were discussing the use of hay fields being used as nesting grounds for sharp-tailed grouse or what most people call 'prairie chicken.'

My neighbour said that a few years back he put a mother grouse through the haybine. Clipped her wing and she bled to death. Luckily, her little ones just hatched a little while before and were small enough that they missed the knife on the machine.

My neighbour then took these chicks back to the farm, tossed the eggs from one of his mother hens when she was out of her nest, and placed the chicks in their sted. Hen adopted them as if they had hatched when she wasn't around.

Everything was looking pretty good. Fed the chicks a little chicken feed..BAM...all drop dead. WHY? Medicated feed. You cannot feed wild birds medicated feed or it will kill them!

Now, when you realize this and think about it, is the EU really wrong in banning antibiotics and hormones in their food?

Grassfarmer is definately on the right track with his grassfed beef idea, although I think it is more broadly a reflection on the need for more organic production, or more eliquantly put, 'a reconstruction of thought in conventional production.'

And not to seem one-sided, BFW, I know what you mean when you say that hormones are a good thing when it comes to economic advantages. For many years, if it looked like the year might be a little low on calf prices, give the steers (never bulls or heifers) an implant before they go out to pasture and (in our case) your cows are bringing back calves that average 500 rather then 460 or 470.

But then their comes a point when people get too greedy and run for the buck rather then to try to stabilize their cash flow. This is evident through the ads that Ralgro and others had through the years. At first, hormones were strongly recommended only for steers and because of their cost, should be considered only if "the producer is unsure of the fall market prices." Now we have implants that are for steers and heifers, and their are many people who will use them just to get that little bit more out of their cattle, regardless if they need to or not.

We used to do the steers only if we were worried about calf prices in the fall, as it was of quite an economic gain. It was when we began to use implants in years when calf prices were quite decent, that I began to realize that we should step back and realize what we are doing.

We still have the Ralgro gun and almost one full round of implants. We did not use it this year (and have not for quite a few years), but in hindsight, should we have? Based on what may happen this fall with the predicted huge calf run, every dollar counts. So yes, we should have.

As producers we want to get away from things like antibiotics and hormones, but we need to change the entire system of how we are paid for our product. And that will only happen after something changes. Many producers would hope that the consumer would pay more for the conventional product so that it would be more economically feasible to make the change to 'more organic-based and environment friendly production.' But that is not going to happen. Consumers want us to make the changes to our product first, and then they will decide how much to pay us accordingly.

To use a perfect analogy, take a carpentry tool like a cordless drill for example. The company does not ask the consumer to pay more for their regular drill in order to finance the production of a new one-of-a-kind drill because then the consumer would get cheesed off at the price, wonder why they are being charged so much for a regular drill, and then buy another company's drill. No, the company must find the resources and finances to put forth a new one-of-a-kind drill that in the end, the consumers will hopefully judge to be of higher quality or desirability then the other 'regular drills' and for that matter demand a higher price.

In the end, the phrase, 'the consumer is always right,' is always right. Any other way or notion leads to nothing but demise.

[cowman]

An implant definitely will put some weight on a calf but at what cost? Once upon a time I used to use them but I got sick and tired of little 400 lb. heifers bulling and the darned little steers riding everything!
Now 40 extra pounds of weight looks pretty good for a $1.25 investment right? But the last few years the darned buyers just adjust the price down so you don't get a heck of a lot more anyway.
I think the days of hormones should be over. If those hormones turn these little calves into sex maniacs, what the hell is it doing to the people who eat it!

[cswilson]

Haven't used implants for years except to Jazz up steers a few years back to use as gomers. In fact are calves a certified hormone free so are eligible to go to Europe if that market develops.In fact I'm convinced unimplanted cattle quality grade better-our last 33 fats we killed had-Sterling-20 head-8-19cent premium. Prime-7 head-16-22cent premium. CAB-5 head-11-16 cent premium. AAA-3-7 cent premium. The premiums vary because we had some heavies because of having to wait to kill them. But you can see that the quality grade premium balances out the increased performance from implanting- average per head premium was around $85.00 per head.

[cakadu]

I would argue that despite best efforts, we are no where near the lowest cost producer, no would we want to be in my opinion. As lowest cost producer, that implies that you will "take" the lowest price offered and that certainly isn't the way to make any money in the beef business.

We have grown larger and larger in an attempt to have some sort of margin and what has it done for us? We have razor thin margins and that is for those who know their costs of production. Far too many producers do not have any idea of their production costs in a year -- all they know is that every year they go a little further in the red or see less black, which ever way you want to look at it.

We simply cannot compete with countries that can leave them out on grass year round. In a good year we have to feed for a minimum of 200 days; I don't think we could ever be the lowest cost producer of beef no matter what we did.

[cowman]

You are correct Linda. No way can we feed cattle up here in the bloody Artic and compete!
Now if we had a government that actually gave one small rip about its farmers the answer would be simple...don't compete! Don't let that cheap beef in here at all. Basically the same thing the EU does(in a round about way) and the exact same thing the US is doing to us right now!
Do we really need to export beef? Well yes we do because the darned cow herd is just too big! And it is too big for one reason...the government chose not to stand up and protect our grainfarmers in the international grain wars! The EU and the Americans subsidized their grain farmers...Canada chose not to...claimed they didn't have any money!!! Of course there is always lots to go around for idiot schemes like gun control and goofy ads to make Quebec happy!
So grain was no longer feasable for a lot of people and in came the cows! Almost all our problems today can be traced back to poor agricultural policy over the last three decades?
This "devastating" decline in agriculture has been borne by the farm families and small rural communities. A whole way of life is slowly dying and no one cares! Canada is Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa and they couldn't care one hoot if all the dumb farmers were gone!
They see absolutely no value in the Canadian farmer!

[rsomer]

Cakadu: You are overlooking the fact that Canada did have a competitive beef industry prior to BSE and we will have a competitive beef industry after BSE. Your comments to the effect that we are not the world’s least cost producer of beef, while true, does not explain the reality that at the beginning of 2003 Canada was the world’s third largest beef exporter. (See: http://www.statpub.com/statlivenov03.html ) Obviously if we were not the world’s least cost producer then we must have achieved our competitive advantage some other way, I would suggest possibly by offering a differentiated product also by having preferential access to valuable markets. Our historical trading relationship with the United States, which is the world’s largest beef importer, gives Canada a distinct competitive advantage over other countries who do not produce a product specifically tailored for the North American market place as we do.

We will not be the most competitive in every market but we can be most competitive in some markets. BSE could actually end up working in our favour as I expect with more testing BSE will be eventually found in every beef producing region of the world. This would be a disadvantage for grass feed beef which tends to be older before coming to market as opposed to grain fed beef which typically is market ready well before 30 months of age.

My sense of the Canadian beef industry before May 20 was that it was doing very well. Lots of shiny new trucks and stock trailers at the auction mart parking lots. While it is always possible to figure your costs so you appear to be loosing money there was a lot of money being made in all sectors of the beef industry in the years leading up to 2003.

The fundamentals of raising and feeding cattle in Canada has not changed and within the foreseeable future we will regain our access to the North American marketplace. I expect that within a relatively short period of time, just a few years, consumers and the media will loose interest in BSE. Although that is not to say that the industry will not face new challenges we will meet those as well. Canada remains a good place to raise beef, not just because of climate, but because of our infrastructure, and our stable economic and political environment.

[grassfarmer]

rsomer, I agree with many of the points you raise and I don't have the experience to comment on judging the health of an industry by the amount of shiny new trucks at auction marts pre 5/20/03.
It seems glaringly obvious though after reading thorough works by Cam Ostercamp and the NFU that the "advantage" that allowed Canada to export large quantities of beef was achieved by the multi-national packing companies screwing beef producers down to unsustainable margins. This caused the treadmill affect of producers running more cattle to stand still - the myth of "efficiency". Are we happy to be in that position again or are we going to get off our backsides as an industry and create a real "value chain" with an equitable share of profits?

[cakadu]

Competitive for whom, rsomer? Fancy accounting aside, which sector of the beef industry was making consistent money? Cow/calf, backgrounder, feeder? The last 2 or 3 years have been hard on producers - drought, floods, grasshoppers, no feed, no money to buy really expensive feed, and this year just a simple no money for anything.

It's easy to drive shiny trucks and fancy equipment, but a lot of that was bought with borrowed money and payments do have to be made. Does that imply that you are doing well if you can afford to make all of your payments?

The fact of the matter is that we cannot and should not be looking to one market solely for our exports. If we learn nothing else from this whole fiasco, it should be that, don't you think?

Yes, we may be the third largest exporter - for now. We always seem to want to keep ignoring the fact that there are the South American countries that are going to flood the market at some stage and they are prepared to give customers what they want.

As you are probably more aware than a lot of us, all of our exports to the US make up around 10% of their domestic supply. Realistically, do they even need us now that they have signed with Australia?

I shudder to think that we would even want to have business as usual pre-BSE!