What should our groups have done?

[smcgrath76]

Now that the border is sort of open for at least another day or two there is a nagging question.
What should our producer groups have done? I know there are a lot of producer groups trying to stake their claim, but I am primarily thinking of CCA and their counterpart provincial organizations such as ABP, SSG, MCPA, etc.
I see them taking some of the glory already for things changing.
Personally, I strongly believe we need effective producer representation in the public arena. I also believe that no matter what the CCA did they were basically destined to be ineffective until USDA decided to make a move to open things up. In this light a lot of their actions would appear to be a complete and total waste of money.
Their is an argument that they fought for and obtained various producer aid packages from government, and have done some work on opening/regaining markets, although I am not 100% convinced that this has been effective either. Perhaps we would have been better off to ignore the US court situation and spend all of the money on new markets/packing plants/value chain development?
I am interested to hear others thoughts on this. I think that if BSE does not result in a significant revamp of the structure of these organizations, then I personally will have a very difficult time supporting them (for example there are a lot of ABP representatives for only 50,000 beef producers in AB).

[farmers_son]

I might instead suggest there are a lot of ABP delegates for the 100 large feedlots in Alberta.

Isn’t it kind of unfair to start pointing out what should have been done? Hindsight is 20/20 and is always irrelevant.

The structure of ABP was being revamped while the BSE crisis was ongoing. The ABP structure is considerably different than before May 2003.

The U.S. court situation is a smokescreen or an excuse for the U.S. administration delaying any kind of normalization of cattle trade. And if it was not for the help of the USDA Inspector General we might be in a different situation today, even if that improved situation could well be very short lived.

Rather than focus on the past I would say what can be done about the future. Some lessons have been learned, at considerable cost mind you, and it would be foolhardy to not act on those lessons. Of course there are the obvious suggestions like increased packing plant capacity. That is already being done to a limited extent.

I am thinking we need to strengthen our relationship with the NCBA and the U.S. cattle producer. We need to focus on reaching out to the American producer, to form alliances with our fellow cattle producers to address the problem of chronically low returns at the farm gate. Packer control of the industry and unfair producer returns are a North American problem and need a North American solution.

Increasingly the American producer is seeking made in the U.S. solutions which are bound to fail as they ignore the realities of the North American/NAFTA market. It is well past time that we start finding ways to join together so that producers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico can all get a fair dollar from the marketplace. Our problem is the packing plants, not fellow cattle producers in the United States.

From a U.S. producer standpoint, Canada should be part of the solution not part of the problem, not that we were part of the problem but they seem to think we are. We need to get all cattle producers onside to deal effectively with the real problem, lack of competition within the North American packing plant industry.

When U.S. and Canadian cattle producers are divided it only serves to advance the interests of the packers.

[rkaiser]

You already know where I stand on this one sm. The people BIG C stood for producer ownership of plants and less dependence on the American market prior to BSE.

The question I have for you regarding ABP is also about the 50,000. Never saw more than about 100 at any zone meeting I was at, and a lot of those were in opposition to the ABP agenda.

Now ABP even has people sitting on commitees who don't even have to be elected (new industry group).

Some kind of major overhaul is needed in ABP to truely call it the democratic voice of the producers of Alberta. In fact, probably needs to just be scrapped altogether and start from scatch.

[rkaiser]

Should have read "the people behind BIG C"

[nicolaas]

I think our cattle industry leaders were to comfortable wining and dining their american counter parts prior to BSE, and neglected developing other foreign markets. I'm afraid that history is about to repeat itself. There is too much money and power depending on the status quo for our southern based gov't and industry leaders to make any changes. (For instance feed lot alley. Why ship cattle south and then west to the pacific when cattle could easily be shipped straight west to Vancouver (from southern AB/BC)or Prince Rupert(from the Peace Country) to go to the orient? NO, istead we are once again to ship them to the states to get processed, after they are fed up in southern alberta. Sent letters to my MLA and he seems to like the current (american) way, as he (or whomever he has write his letters) sure defended it hard. I do not think we are any more independent or stronger than before BSE, and I cannot see it changing for the better in the near future.

[smcgrath76]

I did not intend to blast the past. What's done is done, and I believe that most of what has been done was done at the bequest of directors and industry. I think that we do need to use the experience of the past 2 years to really look at what we want our industry groups to do with our money.
I also got an email or two on this one and a couple of good points. There are roughly 32,000 producers and the question of who is a "serious" producer is quite relevant to this discussion. Does it really matter to many producers what these groups do? and/or should these groups focus only on serving the interests of "serious" producers? What are those interests? And are they different from the general interests of the whole industry?

[cakadu]

Sean, I'd be interested in knowing how one would go about defining a "serious" producer? To me it would seem about the same as trying to make a distinction between a hobby farmer and a farmer, wouldn't it? How many producers are there where one or both are working off the farm, for at least part of the year, in order to make ends meet?

The more relevant part, at least to me, is not a matter of how many acres you own or how many animals you raise and ship, it would be the dollar value that comes from what one is doing.

It's sort of the same discussion about whether farming is a business or not.

I wonder if your original question could have been "What should producers have done in terms of the groups?" Randy gives a good example of that and I know grassfarmer has tried to rally the troops, all to seemingly no avail.

It seems to me that the mindset of the groups has to be altered before they will do anything different i.e. new members that have producer interests at heart.

I'm thinking out loud here and would be interested in knowing what some of the rest of you think.

[farmers_son]

You say you got an email or two on this one. I take it by this one you mean this topic. Too bad they did not have the strength of character to post their comments directly here.

[PureCountry]

Pardon me but I think you guys are getting off the rails here. Regarding the ABP and CCA, we should NOT forget what is in the past - how the Hell would we avoid making the same mistakes??

Our 'increased packer capacity' should be moving towards bypassing the American processors, and handling everything from the kill through to the package going to the stores. Why should we have middle men in another country? If we can't see that the biggest lesson to be learnt here, is to become less dependent on American trade, then obviously we'll never learn.

The flippin' ABP and CCA just started publicly talking about seeking other markets and doing more testing in the last few months, while producers AND groups like BIG C have been screaming it from the beginning!!

So how long do you think it will take them to realize that we'd like a LARGE SCALE, CANADIAN, COW-CALF PRODUCER-OWNED PACKING PLANT, somewhere in Alberta or Saskatchewan. And not 10 years down the damn road either!!

If any delegates - past, present, or future - are reading this, I am a cow-calf producer, and that is the type of development I believe my money should be going towards! If I can make it to an ABP zone meeting, I'll stand up and tell ya there too. I'm sick to death of hearing all this crap about bettering relationships. Hey, guess what f_s? When someone does what the US dictatorship has done in the last 26 months... I'm pi$$ed about it!!

I don't want to better relationships! I want to see OUR relationships with OUR government and OUR producer groups improve. I want ABP, CCA, Wild Rose, and all the others start paying attention to what WE want. If you could show me that the majority of producers want to rebuild trade with the US before focusing on bettering our own industry from the ground up, I'LL EAT MY WORDS.

But in my opinion, we haven't had control of this wagon for a long time, and it's about time somebody took the friggin reins and got us back on stable ground, instead of down the trail to Boot Hill.

[PureCountry]

folks the first thing that needs to happen is to ensure that our government realizes that the real spokespersons for industry are the 50,000 producers. The mindset is that the commodity groups are duly elected by producers, therefore they speak for them.
As I have said many times over, each fall there is the opportunity to change things. If you know of a good candidate for ABP, get out and promote the heck out of them now.

The comments made by Minister Horner last week were to the effect that all cattle producers should be very grateful to their representatives on ABP and CCA, because they were the ones at the table whenever it became necessary for anyone to represent our industry throughout this entire BSE crisis.

I don't know enough details to argue differently.

[cowman]

The CCA and ABP were pretty ineffective at getting much done...but then in reality who was? The Canadian government, with their vast resources and clout, couldn't do much either? When ever you are dealing with some one who holds all the cards, you are basically screwed?
Unfortunately in this day and age you need some type of organization to lobby government and what we have is ABP and the CCA. I truly believe the delegates of the ABP are trying their best and are not in it for personal glory or something!
If you take three farmers and ask them about a solution to anything, you'll probably get three different answers! I might really like BIG C's solution but obviously a lot of people didn't...otherwise the ABP would be all BIG C members?
I wonder when people start talking about "serious" producers and catering to their needs? If that is the case then I would suggest the "unserious" producers should no longer be subject to the mandatory checkoff? Not much sense paying a checkoff that works against your interests but goes to promote the "serious" producers agenda?
In reality we already have that? The ABP promotes a lot of ideas that benifit a small chosen few? A clear example would be allowing in blue tongue cattle so the feedlots can have a cheap source of US calves(normal times), or the continued protection of the grazing leases?
Both these programs are pushed to protect the chosen few over the majority?

[PureCountry]

Cowman, when you are dealing with someone who's holding all the cards, you get up and go to another table. If you're real smart, you'll find one where YOU can hold them all.

P.S. - you do not - under any circumstances - sit there and take the 'screwing' like our industry did over the last 26 months.

[farmers_son]

While the Americans were the ones who closed the border and it really fell to them to “open” the border such as it is we should not overlook the important fact that our beef organizations played a crucial role in maintaining consumer confidence in Canadian beef at home. Our domestic consumer is still our number one market and in spite of some very negative comments being made about Canadian beef we are today in a position where we focus on normalizing trade with the U.S. instead of rebuilding at home.

Second our beef organizations and representatives did a lot of work to keep producer confidence from collapsing through the crisis. The Canadian cow herd grew since 2003 in a time when a major sell off of cattle would have caused a wreck. If it had been up to our beef organizations to open the border the border would have been open mid summer 2003 but producers should not overlook what was accomplished.

Assuming the “serious producer” comment was made in an email to smcgrath76 by someone who could have posted those comments here but did not I do not think the remark deserves the time of day.

Perhaps now that we have live cattle crossing the border the ABP/CCA can pay more attention to the problem of unfair pricing of live cattle in North America, not just Canada. Part of that solution could well be a producer owned packing plant. I do not think the ABP or CCA is against producer packing plants in any way shape or form but the view is producers are coming together now to build those plants and that is the best way to go. I personally believe it is necessary for our beef organizations to get more hands on if we are serious about increasing packing capacity and restoring a measure of competition on the Canadian side of the border but not everyone shares that opinion.

I am serious when I say North American producers need to work together instead of viewing each other as competition to be overcome. It is not just the American producers who are pursuing an American first policy, I hear Canadian producers talking about Canada gaining an advantage in this market and that market when in fact the markets are all controlled by packing plants that are international and global in scope. It is something we really need to consider if we ever hope to improve the situation of producers in Canada, U.S. and Mexico. By the way, lets not forget the Mexicans were our big time friends throughout the BSE crisis.

[smcgrath76]

Interesting comments. Some provincial groups such as MCPA do have a refundable checkoff. Others such as SSGA have an optional membership.
Based on comments I have heard regarding participation (for example in ABP), I think I must live in one of the most active zones here in the NE. We will generally get a pretty full house at zone meetings in the fall.
I agree that most of these delegates do this out of the goodness of their heart for the interest of the industry. Often I think that their service on ABP or other like organizations is their first introduction to the entire production chain from farmgate to plate.
I agree with F_S on a couple of things. The US is the largest consumer market in the world and it happens to be not only next door, but also part of a NAFTA agreement. While we may be pissed at the US as producers, we should ignore this market at our peril.
I also agree with searching out further markets, particularly in the rapidly developing Asian Rim.
More domestically owned and controlled capacity AND FURTHER PROCESSING you bet. This is all tied in with expanding markets, and obtaining control of our destiny and better prices.
I am not sure how industry groups really fit into these developments in terms of being "hands on" without benefiting a select group of producers who choose to participate in these types of ventures with their own capital.
As far as the serious/not serious comment, my two cents are that there is no real way to figure this out based on herd size/economic indicator or otherwise. I do know that there are producers who care about what they are doing and how it gets done and unfortunately there are some who don't. My comments were in no way intended to offend, but I do think that it is an important point in the discussion of direction, as I see a lot of organizations focusing on "bigger" producers, rather than all or serious producers. In my opinion this is due largely to the current commodity nature of our business.

[cakadu]

I believe domestic consumers were doing more to support their local producers because it was the producers getting out there with product i.e. more direct marketers. As a result more consumers had a better idea of where their beef came from and how it got to them. Producers themselves were more in the public eye in a lot of respects than the organizations were.

The other thing that was a big help was when the news broke that the packers got the lions share of the bailout money. This was one time when consumers saw a direct cause and effect and to me, this caused them to throw their support behind beef.

We have a food safety system in this country that consumers have come to rely on and the fact that the science told them it was safe was a significant factor in the confidence, that and the fact that the condemned animal that started all of this never hit the food chain.

From what I read in these posts over the past 2 years and learned from talking with people, I would say that many folks felt that we would have been much better off had we focused on producer owned plants and finding new markets instead of continually arguing that the border should have been open.

I'm not entirely convinced that integrated our markets even further is the way to go, nor am I convinced that relying on the market to the south of us is the best either.

The single best thing we can do for ourselves is to stop selling live cattle across the border and keep the value here with producers and in Canada.

I wonder now how we will progress with accomplishing that.