Navigating right now is like going from easing a canoe across the farm pond to suddenly running the rapids. Things are coming more suddenly—and survival comes first.
Paramount for feeders is access to a harvest slot not unacceptably beyond the optimum endpoint. Cattle feeders are having to hold cattle longer than either packer or feeder were planning on.
Nutritionists disagree some on how long it takes cattle to respond to ractopamine and how long they keep responding after it’s out of the ration. Some say four to five days at either end, some say twice that.
But they seem to agree that pulling it doesn’t throw cattle off feed or affect grading. So cattle that were already on it when everyone realized packers weren’t going to keep up, can go off it without harm—except for losing the cost of an expensive feed additive. That slows up gains a little while waiting for harvest. Some feeders getting cattle to the end stages a couple weeks later chose to not feed it at all with pens facing an unknown harvest time.
Meanwhile, we’re hopefully getting past the trough of packer capacity, as a couple big plants get back online and new measures to reduce possible worker exposure and spread of any pathogens are installed. Modern technology helps. Packers are installing walk-through infrared units that scan workers as they walk into the plant processing areas, flagging anyone who has a fever without stopping to aim an infrared thermometer at each forehead. Panels are being installed between stations and between opposite sides of conveyor lines, isolating workers from each other in three directions.
It is hard to imagine the government hadn’t helped packers get personal protective gear and testing capabilities earlier, but President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to hustle equipment and testing capabilities to packers will help. Identifying workers who are sick before they know and keeping them out of the plant as an infection source is critical.
One problem will be overcoming some workers’ reluctance to come back to work. Some plants have to deal with unions that, while within rights to point out some risks and needs, have overblown the risks and inappropriately exploited a tough situation for everyone. For an illness that 98-99 percent of the population survives, the risk may be less than the annoyance of working while wearing more equipment with new shields in place, not to mention the problem of no income when you have bills to pay.
High-risk folks, older people and those with respiratory problems aren’t too likely to be working on the processing line anyway. Long-term, these steps at reducing exposure in the plants could lessen total missed workdays, help workers personally get diagnosed sooner, reduce overall plant sickness and lessen missed days in paychecks.
Cow-calf and stocker operators stand to be the least of the losers right now, as it’s relatively easy to delay shipping calves for a few weeks compared to holding feedlot cattle. Running out of wheat pasture could be problematic, needing to find someplace else to go. But in general, the cow-calf and stocker operators are in a much better place in the beef production chain during a very unusual, trying time for every sector.
Which makes it a strange time for them to be yelling the loudest. The folks pleading to make cattle marketing and beef processing a government function, in many cases, are the ones farthest from the meat case. The most government-involved major farm commodity has been the dairy industry. How has that worked out for them? They are arguably the industry most plagued with oversupply, low prices and shrinking markets. Why follow that road?
This idea of having a federal agency mandate what percentage of a packing plant’s purchasing is done through cash markets is un-American and frankly, socialist in nature. It would take away cattle feeders’ ability to market cattle the way they want to make a profit. What gives one segment of the chain the right to dictate to the whole industry? We likely need to fix our cash market equation but the industry—the whole industry—needs to figure out how to do it, themselves. Government taking away cattlemen’s rights is preposterous. — Steve Dittmer,WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter.)
