In a response to one buyer I have at the sale, he said, “I agree with most of what you said in the letter that was pasted on Facebook.” But he said, “The only part I do not agree with is the packer selling the board to force it lower.”
He said the funds do this. Well, I agree. Sometimes the funds do run with that but if it was true what he is saying I guess you would have to say the packer, I guess, is just extremely lucky that he can sit on the sideline as the funds run the futures down and the packer makes a lot more that way cause he is selling the meat a lot higher. He is a smart man but the only reason the funds run it lower is because there is less resistance that way. And why is there less resistance? It is because they fight it going higher cause they will make less.
The packer is not an idiot and neither is the retailer. To tell you how most of us individual cattlemen feel along with sale barns. When their competitors post on their website something written by the owner of the competitor that tells you they realize this a do or die situation and we are all in this together. I appreciate that gesture not for me but the fact you realize it is true. Our days are numbered if we do nothing! I feel that more strongly than I have ever felt anything in the cattle business. The only way we achieve anything is to band together. Thank you.
To me, right now for myself I have two options—I can sit on the sideline and say very little and coast out and probably still have enough land paid for to leave some to my boys. But if we do nothing I feel there will be three or four big corporations controlling 95% of the fats and 95% of the feeders. At that point my sale barn has little value probably only for odds and ends and crippled cows. This would be easier for me and less stressful. Or I can try to get some change so that my sons and others in their generation might have a chance.
I do not hold any grudge to any feedlot that has a lot sweeter deal than I can get. Nor do I hate the packer and retailer as they are very much needed. But I have to do what is in my heart and what it tells me to do and that is fight for a fair chance for the next generation.
I am ready to get back to normal and quit eating in my pickup.
Editor’s note: Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman who grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
