Riding Herd “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
January 15, 2019 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 61 • No. 1
Second Verse, Same As The First BY LEE PITTS
Dreams don’t work unless you do.
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NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
ias Alert: I enthusiastically voted for President Trump and think he has done a great job in fulfilling his campaign promises, which hasn’t been done since President Polk promised to only serve one term. He freed the Hammonds; significantly reduced the size of Grand Escalante and Bear’s Ears National Monuments; appointed the public lands rancher’s best friend, Karen Budd Falen, to be deputy solicitor for wildlife and parks; appointed two conservative judges to the Supreme Court and so forth. While I may wince at his past peccadilloes, I think Trump saved this country from falling over a precipice into an abyss of socialism had Hillary been elected. Most polling data currently shows that Trump has an approval rating with the general public somewhere in the low forty percentile, while the latest Farm Journal Pulse poll shows Trump’s approval rating amongst farmers and ranchers reaching up to 76%. Only 21% said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of his job as president, this despite the fact that in renegotiating trade agreements farmers and ranchers got beaten up and left for dead on the mean streets of globalism. Trump tried to ease the pain with the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) which was conceived to help farmers and ranchers survive amidst low commodity prices brought about by Trump’s trade deals. National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson said, “Support through MFP is welcome news to family farmers and ranchers who are suffering the brunt of the retaliation from China and other trading partners, but this trade aid falls woefully short of the sort of sup-
port required to blunt current and future damages of the administration’s trade wars. We’ve lost markets that took decades to build. We’ve lost significant value on most commodities. And probably most concerning, we’re losing our reputation as a reliable trading partner, jeopardizing international markets for years to come.” It says a lot about the character of America’s farmers and ranchers that in continuing to support Trump, they are putting the survival of their country above that of their own.
Hasta La Vista Baby One of Trump’s campaign promises was to renegotiate NAFTA which was a disaster for America’s ranchers. According to R CALF’s CEO Bill Bullard, “NAFTA empowered multinational beef packers to indiscriminately displace domestic cattle and beef production with cheaper, undifferentiated imports of
both cattle and beef. This has substantially weakened the U.S. live cattle supply chain and has caused the dismantling of the domestic supply chain’s critical marketing channels and infrastructure, which has substantially reduced competition for the industry and is contributing to the hollowing out of America’s rural communities.” If you doubt Bullard’s words consider these ten facts compiled by R CALF: 1. During NAFTA’s first 18 years 20% of all U.S. beef cattle operations exited the industry. 2. During NAFTA’s first 21 years, 75% of all U.S. cattle feedlots exited the industry!!! 3. By 2014, the U.S. beef cow herd declined to the lowest level in 70 years and today is nearly three million head less than it was when NAFTA began on January 1, 1994. 4. Forty-eight U.S. beef packing plants were shuttered between 1995-2014, and there
have been very few new plants built. 5. The average annual return per bred cow for U.S. cow/calf producers declined from an average of $50 during the seven years prior to NAFTA to $37 from 1994 through 2017. 6. The only years cow/calf returns per bred cow exceeded the NAFTA period’s $37 average were in 2004-2005 when the U.S. banned Canadian cattle imports, and after the 2009 implementation of country-of-origin labeling (COOL). 7. Under NAFTA, the U.S. cattle industry suffered an annual average of a $1.4 billion deficit in the trade of cattle, beef, beef variety meats and processed beef, resulting in a cumulative NAFTA trade deficit of negative $31 billion! 8. In 2014, the U.S. cattle industry suffered a 41% value-based import surge from Canada and Mexico, resulting in the collapse of U.S. cattle prices beginning in 2015. 9. The U.S. cattle producers’ share of every consumer beef dollar declined from 56% the year before NAFTA to 45% in 2017; consequently, packer margins reached unprecedented levels in recent years, averaging $216 per head from 2016 through mid-2018. And the packers just enjoyed their most continued on page two
Why Are Conservative Voters Supporting Liberal Ballot Measures? BY ALAN GREENBLATT | WWW.GOVERNING
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resident of rural Stockton, Mo., casts his vote in November’s election. (AP/Charlie Riedel) Missouri Republicans triumphed in the November 2018 elections. In defeating Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, GOP state Attorney General Josh Hawley carried 110 of the state’s 114 counties. Republicans also maintained supermajority control over both legislative chambers. Yet at the same time, Missouri voters approved a number of liberal ballot measures. They supported an increase in the minimum wage, legalized medical marijuana and a broad measure to restrict lobbying, put new limits on campaign finance and take primary authority for redistricting away from legislators. Not only did those measures pass statewide, but they won majorities in the state’s rural counties, which gave more than 70 percent of their vote to Hawley. The same disparity occurred in other states. Florida’s Amendment 4, which restored voting rights for ex-felons, carried the state’s rural counties. In fact, it was passed by voters
in every state Senate district in Florida, even as Republicans maintained their legislative majorities and won the U.S. Senate and governor races. In solidly red Utah, a majority of rural voters approved a ballot measure to expand Medicaid. Ballot initiatives have lately been more a tool of the left, with progressives looking for ways to push ideas that have no chance in Republican-controlled legislatures. Still, why are voters who would likely never vote for a Democrat willing to support policy ideas that are straight out of the Democratic platform? “There’s like a 20 to 25 point difference on voting for a Democrat and voting for a policy a Democrat would support,” says Bill Bishop, co-founder of the Daily Yonder, which covers rural issues. Bishop argues that politics now is more about identity -- feeling part of a partisan team -- than policy, with candidates paying an “identity penalty” because of their party affiliations. At least some voters who might like a Democrat’s ideas will vote against her, simply because of her party label, he says. continued on page five
by LEE PITTS
How To Live A Long Time
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s a child I was ALWAYS taught to respect my elders but now days it’s getting harder and harder to find one. One of those I respected immensely was Chuck Irwin who just passed away at the age of 94. If his name sounds familiar it’s probably because he was one of the best bit and spur makers in the country. Cowboys loved his silver works of art and horses even more so. Chuck was at a show three days before he died, still taking orders. That night he went out to eat, tripped over a curb and fell. He grimaced, cowboyed up, ate a steak and drank some whiskey before some friends convinced him to go to a hospital. Three days later Chuck checked out of this orbiting nut house and the world is a lesser place. Someone I’m sure you’ve never heard about was the lovely Lavinia, a friend of a friend who my wife visited religiously two and three times a week for a couple years. I dropped by on holidays and birthdays and one of the two photographs I have in my room is of Lavinia as I fed her chocolate cake on her hundredth birthday. My favorite old person was my wonderful grandfather who passed away at 94. I think of him every day. From these three wonderful people I learned a few things on how to live a long and meaningful life. First, stay away from doctors, hospitals and pharmacies. I bet between them, Chuck, Lavinia and grandpa never spent twelve days in a hospital. I also learned that people are a lot like cows, when their teeth start to deteriorate so does their life. At the end, my grandpa’s teeth didn’t even sleep in the same room as he did. My friends also avoided lawyers, stayed out of divorce court and were each married only once until death did them part. Not one of my friends was a vegetarian or took Ginko biloba. They were raised on meat and milk and ate their share of prunes. They ate slowly and in small amounts. My grandpa could take an hour to eat one enchilada and when I fed Lavinia two helpings of her centennial birthday cake I thought
continued on page four