Special Report

Ranchers Speak Their Minds at Historic Meeting in Colorado

By Jule Banville and Jamie Folsom, 8-27-10

	Attendees to today's one-day conference have come from all over the country to show support for enforcing antitrust law violations by meatpackers. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

Ranchers arrived at hotels, at campgrounds, anywhere they could find to sleep in Fort Collins last night in preparation for today’s meeting jointly held by the Departments of Justice and Agriculture to address competition--and, more precisely, the lack of it--in livestock industries.

Advocates for the cattle industry, R-CALF USA chief among them, pushed to fill meeting rooms at Colorado State University this morning as speakers from the federal and state levels gave their takes on enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, which is in place to guard against monopolies in meatpacking.

That law, Montana’s Attorney General Steve Bullock told the crowd, needs “a new set of dentures.”

Dept. of Justice antitrust attorney, Christine Varney, chimed in: “I don’t know what the answer is, but I sure know there is a problem.”

Prior to the start of today’s one-day conference, reporter Jamie Folsom began talking to and photographing participants about why they traveled to Fort Collins, what their issues are and what they hope will come out of the meeting:

Skip Waters runs a ranch in Northeast, Wyo., in the foothills of the Black Hills with his wife, Vanna, who’s with him, and sons, Wade and Vince, who stayed back to work.

SKIP WATERS. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

Waters’ thoughts: “The Secretary of Agriculture and the Attorney General are going to be here tomorrow and we’re hoping to get their ear on these problems and maybe they’ll do something about them.

“We had a good year; weatherwise we had rain and grass. [But we have] had about 10 years of drought and that almost broke us, between that and the market structure.

“We can’t do anything about the weather, but the market structure and the manipulation that’s going on in the market today by the consolidated packing segment… we can’t compete against that. And it’s illegal—it has been illegal since the PSA of 1921 – but with politics, government and big money… it hasn’t been enforced.

“People in this country don’t realize where their food supply comes from and how fragile that structure is and the domestic producers are being run out of business here. And people are going to see much higher prices and probably a lot less consistent quality in their food. It’s been in the news this last week--all of this recall of eggs, salmonella, that’s from corporate farming.

“Were just trying to make a living. We always used to be able to make a living until the packing/processing companies got so big and so manipulative.”

BARNEY CHAPMAN. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

I.B. “Barney” Chapman, II runs the Chapman Family Ranch in Clarkesville, Texas. He and a brother operate several cow and calf ranches in their state; their family has been in ranching since 1844.

Chapman’s thoughts: “You’ll find the ranchers are environmentalists because they have to be environmentalists to pass their ranches along to their families in the future… It’s getting to where it’s not profitable and the little man doesn’t have a prayer.

“Although we did fairly well this year, we need rain. It’s dry and it’s going to be an extremely hard winter for us.”

GILLES STOCKTON. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

Gilles Stockton runs a cow-calf-sheep ranch in central Montana and has been involved in efforts to get the USDA to enforce the Stockyard act. He says they were just starting to make headway when the Bush administration dropped all petitions during his first term as president. “They wouldn’t talk to us anymore,” he says.

Further thoughts: “Well… I have a pretty good off-farm job, so in some ways, you know… I can subsidize my ranching operations… I really feel sorry for any young kids who can’t get started if their parents can’t back them up 100 percent. It’s not possible anymore.”

TIM NORDELL. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

“The wages we can afford to pay our hired help, if we can find any hired help, are simply not enough to make a living.”

Tim Nordell runs a small cow and calf operation in Sedan, Kan., member of R-CALF because they represent the producers.

His thoughts: “The prices, I feel, are being manipulated, so, with these hearings, I hope they go ahead and enforce the Stockyards Act. It hasn’t been enforce in decades.

“[For us, the year] was fair, prices a little better than in the near past, but it should have been a lot better. If we get rid of some of the concentration of packing and get more people out bidding on pens of cattle, it would bring the price up where it belongs.”

HOLLY WADDELL. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

Holly Waddell of Shadehill, S.D., is reporting the hearing for Dakota Rural Action, where she is a member. Waddell and her family sold the last of their cattle to neighbors this spring, as well as their ranch and 90 acres. It is a bittersweet experience for her at this gathering, where young faces are few and uncertainty is high.

Her thoughts: “We’ve lost the next two generations already… Where DO we go from here? That’s a good question…” [1:30 PM]

From left, EDDIE YANCEY, BUCK GUNNET, ADAM MCCLUNG, CLAUDE “TUBBY” SMITH. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

Prior to one of the panels, Arkansas cow and calf ranchers got together to discuss their issues. Their thoughts:

Eddie Yancey: “What I’d like to be able to do is to sell my animals where I want, to whom I want, for a fair American price. Nothing tickles me more than to be in the sale barn selling my calves and there’s just one person there buying ‘em – 350-pound calves – and then this guy...gets a phone call saying he’s got another client that wants 350-pound calves also, and that gives me two bidders for my calves. And I believe that even though this one guy is buying for one client, that he ought to be able to buy for more than one client. I simply think that freedom to sell our animals where we wish would be the way to go.”

Buck Gunnet: “I’m here today just to hear what the panel has to say. [This is] my opportunity to get in front of [Agriculture] Secretary [Tom] Vilsack and some of the committee members, and I just want to make my feelings felt, and make sure that I have a voice in this regulatory process. When I elect someone, I expect them to write our laws and not some regulatory agency. If we have a law or if we have a regulation, I’d like to be very specific and not vague so that nobody can misconstrue it and maybe get it into a court situation. That certainly doesn’t help me as a businessman.” [2:20 PM]

LYNN HAYES. Photo by Jamie Folsom.

Lynn Hayes, an attorney, co-founder and program director with the Farmers Legal Action Group out of St. Paul, Minn., has been working on the issues of competition and pricing in the ranch industry for the last 20 years. “We started this because there was a need,” she said at the meeting. Further thoughts:

“One of the biggest stories that I’m hearing now is how there is essentially no competitive bidding for slaughter-ready cattle, fat cattle, in this country anymore. The packers have essentially virtually the entire market in some form of control. And if they are buying on the direct market, there is still some kind of direct-negotiated kind of sale rather than any kind of bidding, so of all the groups I represent, their goal is to get some competitiveness back into the livestock sector.

“The consumer is still paying vastly more and, I believe, it’s both packer-concentrated market power as well as retailer concentration. And the consumer is getting hit from both of those.

”I think the Obama administration is very much trying, and I think that what this meeting is what this is all about--the Obama administration trying to figure out what do we need to change.

“We just need to speed up the action.”

For more reports from Fort Collins, see the Daily Yonder.

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