I am a fan of alliances. Difficult to do though, our mindset is not there yet. Ed Miller, Terry Schetzle and some others have formed an alliance to attempt to get a better price from the packers. Hope it works for them and certainly they are trying.
How can small alliances work in Canada with our packer structure? To be sold interprovincially or internationally all beef must be slaughtered in a federally inspected plant and there are not very many of those and even fewer, if any, that do custom slaughter.
I tend to think in terms of larger alliances, at least a North American alliance. Have you heard of the Five Nations Conference? Maybe Australia is kicking our butts but their production system is more similar to ours than say South America. At some point cattle producers need to stop thinking of each other as competition and instead work together, form alliances if you will, to extract more profit from the value chain. In that respect it becomes very important when we are thinking of what we can do who “we” is. We presently have a few global packing plants pitting country against country, producer against producer in effect driving down the price of live cattle everywhere. Meanwhile they are laughing all the way to the bank. I think producers need to start forming global alliances but try to get that past the R-Calf boys and others like them who have a much narrower focus. Unfortunately they end up serving the packers interests who seek to keep producers divided and thereby weak.
What point is there in market development and product differentiation if none of the benefits of those efforts make it back to the men and women actually on the land?
How can small alliances work in Canada with our packer structure? To be sold interprovincially or internationally all beef must be slaughtered in a federally inspected plant and there are not very many of those and even fewer, if any, that do custom slaughter.
I tend to think in terms of larger alliances, at least a North American alliance. Have you heard of the Five Nations Conference? Maybe Australia is kicking our butts but their production system is more similar to ours than say South America. At some point cattle producers need to stop thinking of each other as competition and instead work together, form alliances if you will, to extract more profit from the value chain. In that respect it becomes very important when we are thinking of what we can do who “we” is. We presently have a few global packing plants pitting country against country, producer against producer in effect driving down the price of live cattle everywhere. Meanwhile they are laughing all the way to the bank. I think producers need to start forming global alliances but try to get that past the R-Calf boys and others like them who have a much narrower focus. Unfortunately they end up serving the packers interests who seek to keep producers divided and thereby weak.
What point is there in market development and product differentiation if none of the benefits of those efforts make it back to the men and women actually on the land?
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