From the Barnyard by Mike Graves
In this week’s Cattlerange.com is an article titled “The Humbling of an Industry,” which pertains to the fall of the cattle market in the 4th quarter of 2015. (Fed cattle fell from $170 to $115 cwt.)
As usual, Cattlerange does an excellent job of backing up their facts with numbers, and the numbers told us that in 2014, we were in for a carefree ride on a positive slope. What the numbers didn’t know was that the economy of China would hiccup – causing the world to throw up, and the U.S. pork and poultry supplies would be more than ample to cripple the cattle market, which was suffering from too much tonnage of hanging, expensive meat.
The meat packers, reeling from red ink are now attempting to recoup some losses by keeping the price of meat as high as possible.The joker in the deck is how much the consumer will continue to pay for red meat.
What can we, the producers of red meat do, to regain lost market share? First of all, we can continue to produce a great, healthy product.Second, tell the world about our great, healthy product by belonging to associations which protect, defend and promote our product.
Arkansas Cattlemans Association V.P., Nashville rancher Jerry Christie had this to say regarding membership to the cattlemans group;
“Our strength is in our numbers, and we need people from all walks of life to belong to ACA.
My method of recruiting members is to show off these award winning choppers, and either charm or scare them in to buying a membership. And with help from Donnie Newberg, we can set new membership records.”
As suppliies of beef increase, in order to sustain growth in our industry, we need to increase demand or be prepared to face the consequences of a lower market. We’ve been humbled, now, let’s learn our lesson and do our job: provide the world with a great product at an affordable price.
• “January thru December, we had such a perfect year.”
– Ronnie Milsap
• “All seek the joy not found on Earth.”
– St John Chrysostom 4th century
