14 minute read
NMCGA President’s Message
from NMS Nov 20
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE by Randell Major NMCGA President
Randell Major President Magdalena
Loren Patterson, President-Elect Corona
Dustin Johnson NW Vice President Farmington
Cliff Copeland NE Vice President Nara Visa
Jeff Decker SE Vice President Lovington
Roy Farr Vice President at Large Datil
Shacey Sullivan Secretary/Treasurer Peralta
Tom Sidwell Immediate Past President Quay
Pat Boone Past President Elida
Dear Producers, and All,
This year’s NMCGA Joint Stockmans’ will be live virtual meetings. Jonas, Michelle, and Taylor have been doing a great job getting this planned and organized. The planning of such an event is everything but routine. This year’s convention adds new brainstorming simply because this will be our first virtual convention in our 106 years of existence. Our guest speakers will be Randy Blach the CEO of Cattle Fax, Marty Smith President of NCBA, Corbitt Wall of National Beef wire, and Jim Richards with Cornerstone Government on Political Outlook just to name a few. NMCGA will be sending out the registration forms, so be watching for it.
Sam Smallidge from the Range Improvement Task Force and Nick Ashcroft Nat’l Res Policy/ Plan Analyst, Sr., emailed out a survey that is collecting facts and data about the wolves and your operation. It is important to fill the survey out. The data will be important to show the changes if or when the wolf arrives at your operation. The survey will help expose increased costs of operation and other damages that producers face. One thing we can count on is that the US Fish and Wildlife Service will be looking to expand the wolf population. This information will be vital when presenting to decision makers or for any other legal matters.
Recently the NM Court of Appeals concluded that theft of cattle, be it 1 or 100 head, are potentially only exposed to a single felony count for the heist. NMCGA has signed on to the New Mexico Livestock Board’s amicus brief to educate the New Mexico Supreme Court about the livestock industry and explain why the Court of Appeals came to the wrong conclusion in their legal analysis. When stealing livestock, it should be one felony per every head of livestock stolen. Criminalizing cattle rustling is an important deterrent to protect property interests in livestock and the industry.
NMCGA recently submitted comments that we do not support USDA’s mandated proposal to transition to Radio Frequency Identification Tags as the official identification tags for all currently covered cattle and bison moving interstate. Concerns are RFID tags can easily be removed to evade being identified, fined, and prosecuted for animal diseases or other forms of wrongful acts. The high cost to implement and maintain an RFID system will be passed on to the producer. Other concerns are privacy and hacking of data and New Mexico remaining a brand state.
This year has been especially challenging. Issues that affect our cattle producers and feeders are still out there. NMCGA continues to advance and protect the cattle industry of New Mexico. Your continued support of this association is needed and greatly appreciated. There will be several opportunities to support the association during the Joint Stockman such as the sponsorships, on-line auction, and raffles, just to mention a few. Please contact the office if you have any questions.
I hope everyone is having a great Fall, and I look forward to seeing you all at this year’s Joint Stockman.
Until next time,
Randell Major
WIT &
WISDOM
by Caren Cowan, Publisher
New Mexico Stockman
What Comes Next?
As we sit here with perhaps the most important election of our time just a few days away, it is hard not be just a bit apprehensive. It seems clear that we may not know the results of the election for weeks or even months.
Remember when George Bush was elected President in 2000 it was well into December before the election was settled. There could be countless other elected seats that won’t be known anytime soon.
The one thing that I can say with certainty is that this has been the most bizarre election of my time. Who would have ever thought that the fight for a few rural seats in the New Mexico Legislature would draw enough money to purchase television advertising for partisan candidates? Or, that a US Senate candidate in a neighboring state would be buying time in the Albuquerque television market.
Perhaps the most perplexing question is why the National Realtors Association’s Congressional Fund would take such a keen interest in the New Mexico US Senate seat. Their spending is completely partisan and involves tons of money.
It will take research skills well beyond mine to determine why and how much money was spent. This fund is “dark money” so there don’t seem to be any records available online. The fund did raise over $20 million for the 2020 election cycle and they have spent over $13 million as of October 14, 2020.
This begs the question, what is the big issue coming up that realtors think they need so much influence in? I cannot figure out what it has to do with a New Mexico US Senate seat. I have tried to generate some
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conversation on Facebook. No one has anything to say.
One of the great things about this election is that a conservative candidate for governor of New Mexico in 2022 has surfaced. There will be more on this subject in the months to come.
Then there is the just plain weird. I have been getting emails from past President Obama begging me to help the Biden Campaign. It really would have been nice if Mr. Obama had such interest in me when he was president.
Hopefully by the next issue there will be more clarity in the future. I know what I think will happen, but I wouldn’t want to jinx anything at this late date.
Election Ethics…
Or what should have been election ethics. We voted early because we feared what might happen as the election grew closer. I mean you could be hit by a bus at any time… if you lived somewhere you weren’t sheltering in place.
It is a multi-generation family tradition to go to the polls as a family to cast our votes. I have held true to that with the exception of a few elections when I was living in Texas and voted via absentee in Arizona.
Wanting to vote early once the early voting polls opened, we drove to our local early polling place on a bright Monday morning. There has never been long lines at this polling place and if there were they moved along at a good pace.
Not this year. We went in the morning, but well after the polls had opened. There was a long line. We opted to come back later. We went back in the early afternoon… the line was longer. We decided to go back the next day.
The following day we got there about 20 minutes before the poll was to open — the line was longer that it had been the day before. I was not going to go home again. We found a handicap parking place right in front of the polling place. I parked Randy there and headed off around the corner to get in line.
I did neglect to leave him the car keys…
so he couldn’t roll the windows down or listen to the radio. He wasn’t happy. When the line progressed to where he could see me, he came for the keys and hobbled back to the car.
It took more than an hour for the line to get close to the car. We were probably 50 feet from the door when all of a sudden what appeared to be an aging hippie woman walked out of the polls carrying an ample supply of League of Women Voters Election Guide newspapers. She was trying to give them away. She said they “were non-partisan and contained lots of useful information.” I promptly contacted State Representative Gail Armstrong who contacted the State Party to report it.
There was a small stack of the papers laying on top of printer left of the door as we walked in. I appropriated those. But there was another stack of them up against the wall on the other side of the room. That section was cordoned off with a small plastic chain and a women standing in front of them. There did not appear to be a poll watcher in sight. Hopefully the Party was able to correct the situation.
Then we learn that the Party poll watchers in Las Cruces were ejected from the polling place. That story made national news.
Finally, a gentleman on the East Side went to vote really early in his county clerk’s office. He was told he had already voted.
There is no telling what was really happening across the nation or our state.
COVID 19
As we continue under lockdown for seven months, there is little clarity in the COVID picture. Although I completely believe that there is a disease out there that is killing people, it is really difficult to swallow what the local and national media is telling us. The numbers we get for New Mexico simply don’t add up. The national numbers don’t either.
We know that 1,018 people have died during this pandemic in New Mexico. But did all of them die of COVID or did COVID worsen pre-existing conditions or did someone just want to add numbers to the COVID death toll?
I know of one New Mexico family that lost an elder during the summer. He had a heart attack with no connection to COVID. Local officials attempted to coerce the family to agree that the death was COVID because the county would receive more federal money if COVID was involved.
As of October 30 I have lost two dear friends to COVID. One of them had several pre-existing conditions that didn’t help anything, but they were living well with those conditions before COVID happened.
My heart and prayers go out to that family and to all the families who have suffered and may continue to suffer.
It may be heresy, but I do wear a mask when I am out of the house. I fall in the high risk category as does Randy. I also spend time with my 83-year-old mother, so I try to be responsible. I don’t want to get entangled with law enforcement either.
She had game
Jessica Sanchez of the Red Doc Farm Sanchez’, Bosque, passed in early September. She was 44, was a doctor and was full of life and joy. She had six siblings and nine nieces and nephews under the age of 10. It is hard to understand how the Lord can take someone like Jessica who had so much to give and leave people like me here.
I had probably met the Sanchez family before, but I first really met Jessica in 2003 when we were preparing for a Congressio-
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nal hearing that Congresswoman Heather Wilson and Congressman Steve Pearce were holding in Belen on the impacts of the silvery minnow on water and farmers. Those hearings are as much about theater to garner media attention as they are the subject. My friends from Washington, DC and I were working to come up with ideas that would attract the utmost media attention while providing “Groupon has been offering a discount on land on Mars. Right now you can pay just $15 for one acre of land. It is usually priced at $35 . . . meaningful testimony to Congress. Dina Reitzel, with the New Mexico Beef
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Council, suggested I contact Jessica for assistance. She lived in the area, she was knowledgeable on the issue, she was bright and knew no fear, and best of all, she was fun.
She came to the office and we set to planning. Jess would be one of the witnesses to testify in the hearing, but we needed more jazz. She suggested arriving at the hearing on a family tractor. You cannot believe how commanding she looked roaring up to the hearing site in the big ole John Deer.
Because Jess was bi-lingual, we thought her testimony should be delivered in Spanish but a translator would be required. Jess came up THE best idea. She had an elderly farmer friend who was also bi-lingual. Jess would provide the Spanish testimony and her elderly friend would be her translator.
Then US House Resources Committee Chair and private property rights champion Richard Pombo, California, chaired the hearing which was attended by Wilson, Pearce and Joe Baca, California. It is worth noting that now Senator Tom Udall was serving on this House Committee in 2003, but he did not attend the hearing.
The Belen News-Bulletin did a feature story on Jessica, then 26 and assisting the family by being in charge of natural meat sales. She told the News-Bulletin that her parents instilled the values of what life on a farm really meant. She said her parents led by example and taught her that community service was a privilege. Her testimony included the fact that lack of water caused a 30 percent decline in her grandfather’s chile and row crops.
We made the news and I was accepted into a new family that now provides me a dentist, a medical doctor, a veterinarian, an insurance provider and ranching friend and a cousin that hopefully will become a State Senator.
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