Don’t rely on a Hail Mary

It appears not enough members of Congress own barn cats. It makes no sense to own a barn cat and buy them cat food.

If you don’t feed them, they will indeed do their job and be great mousers.” Similarly, if you continue to buy food for the American public, they are not going to go out hunting their own. Clearly, or not, I am talking about using COVID-19 as a half-baked plan to keep sending people money. We are seeing some historic levels of food being imported into the United States and some of the blame goes right to the payments people are getting.

A friend of mine owns shares of two pork plants and a couple bacon-producing shops. In all of those facilities, right now, his operation is 1,000 employees short. In fact, he told me the pork going out the door is completely different in final processing because the employee shortage forces them to leave more bone in the box.

Let’s take a closer look at local processors. While all of them want business, in my conversations with local butchers shops all across the country I hear the same story, “I have more business than I know what to do with and I can’t find people to show up and cut meat.” We have entered an unprecedented era with a work ethic problem and to continue to send people money for not working does not solve the problem.

The biggest issue in DC this week involves trade with Mexico. Our current trade deficit with Mexico is at $11 billion. We know that most of that is in the vegetable business. Prior to 2020, we heard horror stories from vegetable growers in the West about crops rotting in the field because of no labor. My buddy in Nevada, who typically has 22 H2A workers to help with his sheep operation is down to 14, because the Department of Labor creates too many hurdles for him to get workers that want to work. That is not news to anyone who has been trying to utilize the H2A program in the past 10 years.

So when you read the report that says the U.S. is setting a record on imports year to date, you can’t be too surprised. The report last week from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says corn exports are down 11% and cotton is down 19%. Couple that with the fact that imports of beef, veal, sugar and other related products all showed a 13% increase, it creates a very ugly picture. What bothers me most about the basics of this report—the number of people who care.

Those of us in the food business have never lost sight of the fact that food is a means of national security. I will be happy to have the discussion with anybody about how 2020 and COVID-19 brought everybody to understand that local food is important. However, aren’t these now knowledgeable folks the same people who are sitting at their address at home collecting a welfare check? You will not convince me that people walking into the grocery store give 2 shillings about where their food originated.

I nearly left out of the equation the fact that a lamb plant in Colorado was virtually forced into the hands of JBS-Swift who announced it will now be shutting it down, thus eliminating one more market for producers. I think that, in itself, is the problem. We don’t raise sheep so what happens to the lamb plant doesn’t matter.

In 1934 we had 70 million sheep in the U.S. and today we are struggling to have more than 5 million. Whether you eat lamb or not, the trend is exactly what I am talking about: Produce food somewhere else and import it to the resource-rich USA, where farming used to be great.

I am not throwing in the towel, like the misguided Big 10 college football execs. I am saying grab the football and run for the goal line. The time on the clock is expiring and Hail Mary’s rarely work.

Editor’s note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.LoosTales.com, or email Trent at [email protected].