Amother Tid-bit

[ALICIA]

On the new they said that Lakeside is building a bigger plant and it should be up and running by 2005. Also Cargal is a of shot of lakeside. The report kind of lead me to belive that both plants are not only owned by the States, but the same owner, own's both plants and that Cargal is also going to be inlargeing. Lakeside reported that this will mean 300 more jobs.
No offence but with the money they are making, if they want to help with the back log of cattle, we would be better off if we incouraged them to not inlargen the plant they already have but to build 4 or 5 more plants and put them in other provences.
Think about is before getting negitive. The goverment is not going to build any plants and we don't seem to be able to come up with the funds for a producer owned plant. It just may be our only out. Its another year, and maybe the boarder will open and maybe it will not, but we can't go on just keeping the cattle, Any one with real old cows I'd say don't breed them back and they may make it throw the winter and fatten up for next year and you may get a better price if the plant is up and running at a larger number of cattle.

[grassfarmer]

This is refusing to acknowledge the obvious - these two companies are the cause of the problem not the solution.
Our entire hardship here is not being caused by the one cow that had BSE (resulting in consumers going off beef etc) it is about corporate piracy .... nothing else. They are exploiting the captive market they have created due to the border closure to make unheard of profits. I note the TEAM sale in Calgary today saw fats at @ 64-65 cents/lb - that is the price these pirates pay and then fire the beef into a US market where fats are @ $1.18 CDN. This is a scandal of epic proportions and I can't see how to highlight it to the country. Politicians and industry officials are welcoming this new planned expansion because we need killing capacity - but we must have buyers who pay enough that feedlots and cow/calf producers can make a profit too. If they are allowed to get away with buying fats at ruinous prices doubling our kill capacity won't help. I am still stunned by Doerksons statement that cattle are finding markets at "acceptable prices" - can we produce grain fed cattle in Canada at 65cents/lb? - will it even work if the feeders are 50 cents? As someone said below this is a black day for Canadian beef producers. What's the saying? -"all it takes for evil to succeed is good men to stand back?"

[grassfarmer]

it is interested to know we are
sendingthe large portion of our
canadien beef to usa in the high
price but we the producer getting
350 dollar less who is making
hugh profit????? we all know!!!!
would usa not like to buy our 80cent
fresh calf.s ? this fall.65 cent prime
live canadian beef makes good busenis
{b s e} BEEF-SAVE-EATING .

[ALICIA]

We all know that they have the cattle producers by the -----. We all know the answer. Numbers have to come down.
We all have to decide how each of us are going to deal with our own situation, because when it comes right down to it, we alone will have to deal with our own numbers.
The goverment is just handing out tid bits of money to keep our hopes up so that we don't really do something like dig a big whole and start killing the cattle off.
I for one have been thinking of selling half and selling most of my hay to the horse people for $2.00 a bale. I've got 3000 square in the barn. At least the hay in the barn can just stay their if it doesn't sell, and will not keep costing me.

[rsomer]

I do not think the answer is numbers have to come down. I think the answer is we need to get competition back in the marketplace.

Think about it. If someone waved a magic wand and tomorrow we suddenly had packing plant capacity for 105% of available supplies, either by increased packing plant capacity or our cattle numbers instantly were reduced, would the basis off of the U.S. return to pre BSE levels? I do not think so, because when the border closed we were not just cut off from our packing plant capacity, we were cut off from the competition our marketplace needed. We suddenly were left with two packing plants who could effectively operate as a monopoly without competition from U.S. packers and without the controls on unscrupulous packer behaviour that the U.S. had in place.

Sure, if packer capacity suddenly were in line with supplies prices would improve somewhat but prices will not return to normal until there is competition. I would go so far as to suggest that if we had competition right now on the Canadian side of the border even without any more packer capacity and even with the present backlog of fats, that our prices would improve by at least $200 a head.

Reducing our cow numbers through some sort of cull will only serve to shrink our industry when the market does return to normal, which could be in the very near future. It is naive to believe that if we did shrink our beef herd that our prices would significantly improve if there still is no competition in the marketplace to buy the animals that are left.

There was talk in the industry that the Competition Bureau was looking into the unscrupulous behaviour of the packers. Have not heard too much about that recently. But as an industry we need to be aware that without competition it will not matter how much the beef herd is reduced or how much extra plant capacity is built. If that expanded plant capacity is still owned and controlled by the two pirates, Tyson and Cargill, then we will not have a solution.

The marketplace will never function until there is competition, that competition will come when the border opens or when producers have an alternative to market their cattle in their own plant.

[ALICIA]

We will each see our way clear I hope.

[cakadu]

What will this return to normal look like? We will never get it back to the way we were pre-BSE, no matter what happens. If nothing else producers have begun to see that they need to take back some of the value that has been lost over the years.

What will normal look like in the future?

[rsomer]

What will the future be like? Well it is like Dickens’s Christmas Carol and Scrooge contemplating the future if the industry keeps going in its present direction.

The third ghost, the ghost of things to come might show Scrooge this future.

If the industry maintains its present strategic direction, by this time next year one or two packer representatives will sit on the Board of Directors of the ABP and quite possibly on the Board of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association as well. The role of the ABP and CCA will largely be replaced by the appointed members of the Beef Value Chain Round Table which will be the group that liaisons with government and industry. Cow calf producers will have totally lost control of their industry but will pay a $10 per head checkoff to fund further promotional efforts for Tyson and Cargill.

Packers will own nearly all the feeder cattle in the province and be the only buyers of feeder calves. The cattle market for cattle in Canada will largely be irrelevant as the market reports will be merely reflecting the sales of packer owned cattle to themselves and what they have decided to pay for weaned calves. Feedlots will custom feed cattle for the packers and cow calf producers will supply calves for the packers to buy, most on contract at packer determined prices.

Medium and small producers will disappear as CAIS funds high risk, large operations to the tune of $10 million or more each. As medium sized operations loose their reference margins they will have no safety net left and be forced to sell out. The family farm as we know it will disappear to be replaced by integrated global businesses financed by foreign investors just as the grain elevators disappeared almost overnight to be replaced by large terminals owned by multinational grain companies.

The two packers with the help of the ABP and CCA and government will expand their operations to keep out all competitors in Canada. Cargill will expand its ability to bring in more offshore beef from its new plants in Argentina and Brazil which will be slightly processed here and transshipped to the U.S. as product of Canada. Canada will become a net importer of beef.

A producer will be successfully sued for wrongful death for shipping beef contaminated with E Coli.

Gary Sargent will be replaced as General Manager of ABP by Willy Von-Solkema who will step down as Cargill’s Canadian business manager to oversee the budget of the ABP which will have grown to $50 million annually.

Enough already... if this vision of the future is not enough to make you stick your head out the window and order a turkey than you are doomed to share Scrooge's fate.

It doesn’t have to be this way, the future could be quite different. Our beef industry could have a bright and prosperous future but it is up to each and every producer to make the change happen. The days when we could sit back and just let things happen are long gone.

[blackjack]

rsomer...it has already happened... we are down to three sources of buyers that buy yearlings ...two are from the west one from Quebec...one cattle buyer that was sitting at the sale told me most feedlots that fatten are lucky if they can get a bid...unless they want to sell at 60 cents...if you been in the cattle business long enough chances are if you pass on a bid the next one coming will be lower yet...

[kato]

But some things have already started to happen. It doesn't have to be a dark future.

Consumers have never been more ready to 'know where their food came from'.
Canadian consumers in particular have never been more willing to support Canadian cattle producers. Every time we are kicked in the head by our 'friends' to the south, the nationalistic side of all Canadians goes up a notch. In all aspects of our society, not just beef.

Canadian cattlemen, those that will be left when the dust settles, have never been more ready for change.

The only people who are not primed and ready to change the status quo are our elected officials, both in the government and in our producer associations. (One exception may be the Manitoba Cattle Producers, since we've been kicked a lot harder than most).

Now our challenge is to get these people on our side, or boot them out.

As for the government, remember this is a minority government, and quite vulnerable, so don't give up on them yet.

As for the cattle associations, they are supposed to be democratic, so run for office! There are too many representatives who get their positions by acclamation. That has to stop.

My feeling is that at this moment, we have the motivation, and the drive to make real change. The biggest obstacle is ourselves.

Every once in a while you can look back at a particular time and see that it was pivotal in our history. This is one of those times. After this year, no matter which direction things go, they will be different. Now, do we sit down and accept the dark future rsomer has seen as a possibility, or do we get off our duffs and do something?

MMM??????

[cakadu]

Well, rsomer, if that is the foreshadowing of things to come, then it is no wonder that the producer side of the equation is feeling so much animosity towards this apathetic viewpoint, particularly when it is their own checkoff dollars that are helping to fund this future.

Where is the ABP in all of this? Have they become so far removed from what is good for the cow/calf producer that this is all they can see? What about the cow/calf delegates that are a part of ABP? While I am not totally informed about what the ABP is all about, I have gathered some nuggets of information from these threads and I have to admit that I am quite frankly surprised that we are not seeing an implosion coming from within the ranks of the ABP.

It would seem to me that if you are representing the cow/calf interests on the ABP, then you should be working your hardest to ensure that the cow/calf producer is at least somewhat protected. Every year in the mail there is a booklet showing who is representing what on the ABP and it seems to me that there are an awful lot of people that are representing producers. What happens to them once they get into the inner circle? I'm very curious to know and I'm sure others are as well.

If this is indeed the future, then what are groups like the ABP and CCA doing to prevent it?

[rsomer]

I would suggest that anyone who wants to know the workings of the "inner circle" talk to those people directly or even sit in on their meetings. Their meetings are open to the public as far as I know. The ABP board of directors generally goes on a tour in August and often an opportunity for the directors to meet producers is part of the tour.

I am concerned that the "inner circle" as you describe it has shifted away from the ABP and CCA and is now the Beef Industry Value Chain Round Table which are not elected by producers and their meetings are not open to the public that I know of.

Producers need to become more interested and involved in their organizations if they want their organizations to reflect their interests. Producer apathy has been a problem up to now and has been exploited by those leaders and even government who wished to see their own agenda pursued.

[cakadu]

I am asking these questions as an outsider to the beef industry. Has it really been producer apathy or has it been a case of producers feeling that they have elected their delegates and directors to the ABP and that these elected people would represent their respective interests?

What is the difference between a delegate and a director? What are the duties that they are supposed to be carrying out?

What if, up until now, producers and those in the beef industry have not really understood just how badly they have been misrepresented in these organizations, if this is indeed the case?

How would you ensure that personal agendas do not get in the way of doing what it is you are supposed to do?

[rsomer]

I would have thought as a former member of Ag and Food Council you would have been familiar with how the various commissions operating under Marketing Council worked.

See http://www.albertabeef.org/03about.html for a description of delegates and directors and their responsibilities.

Judging by the comments posted in these threads there is unhappiness with the ABP, some of which is warranted and some of which is not. I would encourage all producers to take more interest in their organization, attend as many meetings as possible and ensure the policies that the ABP pursues are in their best interest. In this time of change no should take it for granted that their organizations are going to change in a manner that benefits their operation. Time will tell if producers still will not attend their fall ABP meetings this fall if the border remains closed as producer turnout traditionally tends to be very low. It will be interesting to see just how bad things have to get before producers give a second thought about their industry and organizations.

You have asked me some questions, may I inquire of you what your opinion of the Beef Industry Value Chain Round Table?. Is this an example of a value chain in action? Given that the packers are being investigated by the Competition Bureau and a Parliamentary Committee for questionable business practices, would the packers actions operating as a monopoly be consistent with a value chain approach. Would you say that the packers and Canadian Meat Council being part of the Beef Industry Value Chain Round Table will explain the Round Table’s view that packer expansion will come from within the CMC and that there has been no visible support from the Round Table for packer expansion coming from outside of the CMC such as producer owned packing plants. What is your view of the packers having one or two seats on the board of ABP, good thing or not so good thing?

[cakadu]

Sorry to disappoint but one organization has nothing to do with the other. Ag & Food Council is made up of 25 people from the various sectors of agriculture and agri-business i.e. primary production, processing, retailing, finance etc. Generally there is a rep from the 3 big meats i.e. beef, pork and chicken. Council is at arms length from government, whereas Marketing Council is part of the AAFRD structure. It is made up of some 16 producer groups in the province.

I'd have to hear more about what the intent of that value-chain group is. I've certainly heard about it in the news and in a couple of the threads a long time ago. Refresh my memory - who is sitting on it?

Basically the intent of any value-chain is the open and transparent exchange of information so that everyone involved in the chain benefits from the information. The exchange of information would include things that have traditionally been held under wraps. A value-chain is to help reduce the risk for all the players and thus becomes a risk management tool.

What is the intent of having the packer representation on the ABP and what is the significance of bringing them on at this point in time? Is it something that the packers have been trying to get for a while and just haven't been able to? What is the ABP's reasoning for letting them on? What does the ABP see as the positives for letting them have 2 seats on the board? Wouldn't one suffice, if there had to be any at all? Are these 2 seats being divided between a federal packer and a provincial packer, or will it just give the big boys seats?

Sorry for the more questions than answers at this point in time, but unfortunately I don't have enough information to make a comment at this time.