To Our Future

IF

Make it Easier!

To Our Future

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

           

            There were no pretenses.

            Being horseback and driving the recently acquired red pairs from our shipping trap to the Apache pasture was a welcome relief. For a couple of hours, the chaos of the world we live in was shut out. It was a time of primordial devotion to our business of cow/calf production. The cows, not knowing where they were going in their new surroundings, were nervous and unsure. Each could be observed in how she reacted to her calf, to the drive, and to the herd. The good mothers required little attention. The marginal mothers, like their human counterparts, demanded more effort and time.

            Being only two miles, the drive was not long, but it took a chunk of the morning. The going was slow as the youngest babies started wanting to nurse, fall back, and to lay down. The pairs that demanded the most attention were logged in memory. The lesser doers automatically absorbed more attention than their cow mates, but that is the way of our entire world.

            We address problems as opposed to crafting broad brushed strokes because those problems are always the critical, weak links of our lives. How we handle the problems either makes us better, or … destroys us.

            IF

As this week starts, the harvest of finished cattle in our nation should be improving from the catastrophic disruption witnessed over the past 15 working days. This industry operates under one simple premise. There is no such thing as little disruption especially when such big numbers are at stake. The disruption of the fire in the Kansas kill plant last fall brought major gyrations to the market when only a six percent reduction in daily kill was experienced. That figure was doubled with recent closures due to COVID-19 threats including the big Weld County, Colorado plant that harvests 5400 head of finished cattle per day.

            With it coming back online and holding steady, the potential output could be increasing into the mid 90 percent range of operating facilities. The operative word, though, is if. If becomes a huge factor and a bigger word when each percent of capacity represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 animals per day.

            Finished cattle are no shrinking violets.

            At some 1300 pounds of the sum inputs of sunlight, grass, water, high energy rations, health protocol, and daily management, they are massive in every conceivable comparison. As America has learned, the supply chain of getting them to the meat counter is not automatic, either. Any disruption can send tsunami force gyrations through the system.

            The current state of the hog business is even more chaotic. As of Friday morning, daily kill capacity equating to 80,600 hogs was idled. Shutting the lines down and the lights off in the processing floors is not the only disruption, though. The downstream plants, those that make bacon and honey coated, spiral cut hams, are idled and workers are sent home.

            All this is costing money, and train loads of it.

            And, these words have not even touched on the milk business. Rubbing shoulders with local dairymen this week has been an observed spectacle of putting one foot in front of the other. A veterinarian friend whose main business is serving dairy operations put the point succinctly into perspective speaking about a single, particularly important customer.

            They have 80,000 pounds of fluid milk product loaded in trucks this very moment and it has no home.

            There is little wonder why their eyes have such a distant and faraway look in them. With crushing daily responsibilities, most of the world have little idea of what they face. There is one thing for sure, though.

They are men among men.

            Make it easier

            The outcome of the COVID-19 experience is still a long way from being written.

            From the perspective of American agriculture, the question will remain. Can our society, and especially our government, make it easier to produce our products? China is a culprit, but China is also the result of the absolutely suffocating barriers of continuance that have been loaded on American businesses.

            Every level of government ought to be actively seeking ways to make it easier to keep American businesses at home, on these shores, and in American hands. The problem is, as we experience constantly, government vies for a central focus of attention unto itself. This government, through its propensity to be managed by radical environmental interests, has put us in dire straits. The realization that the most basic inputs of pharmaceutical products and rare earth essentials were off putted to Chinese handlers ought to force an about face in America’s patience with the environmental mobs.

            The party that would dare insult our caretaking to the likes of the dementia reduced Joe Biden must be countered. Likewise, the party that deviates from the election time rhetoric to its own propensity to play the game of kicking the can and appeasement must be countered.

            We are fed up with how Beijing has bullied, cheated and lied its way into supply chains before COVID-19, but we are also fed up with the red tape we are constantly forced to deal with in our attempt to stay viable in the investments that we have staked our lives upon. For example, it is an abject abomination to wade through four, five, and six year holdups on federal cooperative projects and one sided contracts to perform tasks on our ranchlands that should be done in months or even days.

            How is this going to end?

            It certainly won’t be the same as before the first American death on our shores back in February. This is a circumstance of historic proportions. The risk of loss to the foundation of our system is very real.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “One thing to smile about is the constant stream of trucks headed westward every hour loaded with steel.”