Jerry Nine’s voice remains a beacon in the beef industry
Jerry Nine is staple in the beef industry when it comes to market analysis, support of the average cattleman and, of course, his cowpoke sense of humor. Nine began his weekly column in High Plains Journal 19 years ago and his is often the first page readers turn to.
“I guess you could say we’ve developed a good relationship,” Nine said. “I sometimes get calls from 1,000 miles away and they’ll mention an article from HPJ. They’ve been a good tool for getting the sale barn reports out, too.”
Nine bought the Woodward Livestock Auction, Woodward, Oklahoma, in 2000, but he has been in the cattle business since he was a child growing up on a ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma. After high school, he attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva. While attending college, he worked at sale barns in Seiling, Alva and Woodward, Oklahoma.
“I never got a degree but got plenty of BS,” he joked. “Others got theirs at school but I got mine from the sale barns along the way.”
Nine offered some interesting history on the original Woodward sale barn building, which was built in 1932. He says Woodward was the first sale barn in Oklahoma to hold a cattle auction. Although Oklahoma City had already established its stockyards, initially the operators had buyers bid on cattle in the alley without running them through a ring.
With such a storied past, Nine says he has an optimistic outlook on the future and toward tackling some of the big problems he sees in the beef industry today.
“I’m not a negative person, but I’m not positive how many people can survive at the rate we’re going or whether all the small guys will be growing cattle for these two or three big corporations in the future,” Nine explained. “I’m afraid if we don’t tackle the area of packer and retailer manipulation and control that our business doesn’t have as big of a future as it has had in the past.”
Nine says he has seen major changes with packers specifically in the last two years. He says the packers are making big profit off the cattle feeder and cutting ordinary cattlemen out of a decent living. Nine says issues like this are important to him because he always pulls for the underdog and has a penchant for helping the less fortunate.
“Nobody has the willingness to buck up and do something about it. And at the same time, we furnish the packer cattle they don’t have to compete.”
Even with the concerns he has for the direction the cattle industry, Nine says he always has a better hope for tomorrow. As usual, readers will continue to be entertained and informed by his commentary in High Plains Journal. Jerry Nine and the Journal go together like biscuits and gravy, and he always pours it just like we like it.
Lacey Newlin can be reached at [email protected].
