14 minute read
NMCGA President’s Message
from NMS Dec 2020
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 Cattle Producers, and All,
By the time you get this letter, our first virtual joint stockman will be history. The Governor’s orders to shut down the state due to COVID-19 has been the norm for 2020. Ranchers are independent, but we are also social. We want to talk weather, cows, markets, and maybe a wild story or two, and person to person is how that is done. We will make the best of this situation, which we always do.
We welcome 2021 and look forward to a better year. A year of plentiful rain and better prices for our livestock. In order to have in person meetings, we may plan for more regional meetings to substitute larger conventions until COVID-19 subsides.
COVID-19 has brought our nation’s food chain to the limelight and the gaps in it. Pouring out milk on fields and bare grocery store shelves while ripe fat cattle are backed up in feedlots are the reality that needs solutions to make sure this does not continue to happen.
The upcoming 2021 NM legislative session appears to be unpredictable and excruciating as we prepare for the battle to keep what we have. One fact known is that there is no money available. Some of the legislation we see coming down the pipeline are redistricting or gerrymandering, decarbonization policies, climate impacts and policy recommendations for achieving executive order climate targets. We have been following the branding alternative amendment closely. NMCGA will be discussing and voting on policy for the state meat inspection bill sponsored by Representative Rebecca Dow and Representative Gail Armstrong at the board meeting in December.
NMCGA joined nine other agricultural organizations that represent thousands of food producers from across the state, signing a letter to members of the New Mexico Legislative Council Committee requesting that the upcoming legislative session be postponed until true public participation can be safely incorporated to avoid risk of exclusion and inequity.
On the national level, the Farm System Reform Act sponsored by Senator Cory Booker and co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, is lurking to socialize our current agriculture businesses. This legislation attempts to eliminate all beef feedlots over 1000 head capacity by 2040. This legislation is supported by over 200 animal welfare, sustainable agriculture, environmental, and public health organizations that want to transform agriculture to a government style system. If you have not read this bill yet, you should. It is alarming how this socialistic style legislation is being presented in this country. If our nation’s beef and cattle industries and trade associations are ever going to unite, now is the time. The best thing government can do to help our lives is to stay out of it.
As we come to the end of this year, I would like to take a moment to remember all who have passed. “The world changes from year to year, our lives from day to day, but the love and memory of you, shall never pass away.” –Author Unknown.
Take care and God Bless.
Sincerely,
Randell Major
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WIT &
WISDOM
by Caren Cowan, Publisher
New Mexico Stockman
When Shelter in Place Should Be Over …
Couple reduced to watching home make-over shows in the middle of the afternoon… He says “That is the homeliest woman I have ever seen…” She responds, “Some might find me homely.” He says, “Yeah but you aren’t on TV.”
Trying to make a call via Australian-voiced Siri… Siri says “Home or mobile?” Response is mobile… before the dings, so it is repeated. “I can only make one call at a time!”
And not so funny… the day after Thanksgiving, national “news” caster says, “If you traveled over the holiday, consider yourself infected with COVID.”
No News in the “News”
Watching the news has always been one of my favorite things (I know, a sign of my age). Not anymore. If I had my way about things, the “news” would never be on in my house (not to worry, he never reads this column).
Last night the CBS broadcast started out with “President Trump made more false claims about election violations.” Isn’t CBS’s responsibility to report what the President said, and to let me decided if it is false?
Both CBS and ABC gleefully reported that in one precinct, election recounting had turned up 83 more votes for Joe Biden. Wouldn’t one expect to find more votes for each candidate in the massive amount of recounting going on across the country?
The topper was when the broadcasterette patted herself on the back, closing the broadcast with “Great show, right?”
I didn’t think I would ever be someone to depend on the internet for news. Yes, there is more than a fair share of bias to go around, but at least with a little looking you can find both sides of the story.
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The Future
While we are still not sure what the political future holds, there seems to be a lot of attention on New Mexico as a new federal administration is forming. It has long been expected that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham will be in a Biden Cabinet. The best guess is that she will be Secretary of Health & Human Services, but Interior and Energy have been whispered as well.
At press time there was more speculation that Congresswoman Deb Haaland will head up the Department of the Interior, the first Native American to do so. However, retiring Senator Tom Udall’s name is still in the running.
Some have said that New Mexico, with its mere five Electoral College votes, won’t end up in any of these high positions. Only time will tell. After all, Governor Lujan Grisham is a co-chair of the Biden Transition Team.
There is also lots of speculation that U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich already has his eye on New Mexico’s governorship in 2022 and is making plans to head home. This could create another opening for a US Senator for New Mexico in the not too distant future.
Legislature
There is still no public plan for the 2021 New Mexico Legislature. Constitutionally the Legislative Session must commence on the third Tuesday in January. For 2021 that is January 19.
There have been whispers of a virtual event that has brought outcries for a postponement of the Session until a date that may be safer in terms of COVID 19. According to the New Mexico Constitution the third Tuesday is a hard date. However, there seems to be nothing stopping the Legislature calling itself into Session and temporarily adjourning to some date in the future. We will do our best to keep you posted as the story unfolds. Please check our website at www.aaalivestock.com or like the New Mexico Stockman on Facebook for the most timely updates.
State Meat Inspection
Although there is no date for the Legis-
lature work is already going on for bills that inspection must be done on an over-time designations out of the Wildlands to blur will come up whenever the Legisla- basis. And as one leader pointed out, isn’t county, state and national land designature is held. the best government the government that tions. Whether you know it or not, those in
One issue at the top of lots of ranchers is closest to home? Southern New Mexico are living in the Sky minds is state meat inspection. In the past the New Mexico Livestock Board managed The Unthinkable Is Islands, while Northerners live some place else. a state meat inspection system that allowed Back in early 90s I began to hear about It wasn’t long before Agenda 21 was smaller slaughter facilities to sell their prod- the Wildlands Project. That something like connected to the Wildlands Project. One ucts to the public. That was eliminated that could happen in the United States of could write volumes about Agenda 21, but during the Richardson Administration. America was unthinkable at the time. But suffice it to say that we are seeing it unfold
For the past few years there have been by the 2000’s the term was commonly used before our eyes while we are being kept in requests for a state system to come back. in the media and elsewhere. Now govern- lock down. Now would be a good time to Representative Nathan Small carried a ment agencies are now using land google Agenda 21 and see how it compares memorial for the study of what it would take to bring system back in terms of finances and resources.
As the pandemic grew this spring and summer, there was a loud cry from the public wanting to purchase meat products directly from the ranching families that produce them. A bipartisan measure was introduced in the late June Special Session to create a new system and request financWhite Mountain Herefords White Mountain HerefordsWhite Mountain Herefords ing. Given the duration of the Special, the bill did not get heard.
Since that time there has been an indication that the Governor supports such a measure and is willing to devote funds to start the process. The first year, the State will have to foot the entire bill for the system, which could exceed $1 million. Those funds will be necessary to hire and train inspectors and to get federal approval of a New Mexico system. A state inspection system must be equal to or greater than the federal requirements. Daric & Patty Knight After the first year, the feds will pay half of the cost, with State general funds necessary for the other half. In thinking about it, Daric & Patty Knight Springerville, Arizona Springerville, Arizona c: 928-521-9897 • h: 928-333-3600 once inspectors are trained and in place, fees should cover a great deal of the cost involved. Daric & Patty Knight Springerville, Arizona c: 928-521-9897 • h: 928-333-3600
Representative Rebecca Dow is working c: 928-521-9897 • h: 928-333-3600 with her constituents and others to get a bill crafted that meets the approval of the beef community. The New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau passed policy supporting state meat inspection at their recent annual meeting. The bill is also supported by Protect Americans Now and the Grant County Cattle Growers. The New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association will take the issue up during their Legislative Committee meeting slated virtually December 15 at Custom Slaughtering 9:00 a.m. Other groups will be taking it up as well in the weeks to come. It is worth noting that the federal government does pay for federal meat inspects & Custom Processing for eight-hour days. After that inspection costs about $100 per hour. However, in states like New Mexico, most of the federal Thatcher, Arizona • 928-428-0556 • Call for info & scheduling
with things that have happened this year. support on both sides of the Atlantic. This
The latest trick out of the basket of glo- might be expected in Europe, but that it has balism is The Great Reset. There are a been taken up by the Business Roundtable couple of stories on the issues in this pub- and many leading firms in the U.S. — lication, but there is much more to allegedly a bastion of both free enterprise be learned. and democracy — is depressing. Looked at
The ‘Great Reset’ masterminded by the optimistically, the BRT and its C-suite cheerWorld Economic Forum is just corporatism leaders are useful idiots. Looked at by another name, according to an article in realistically, they are part of a managerial the National Review by Andrew Stuttaford class grubbing for the power that flows in late November. from other people’s money.
In an earlier story Stuttaford described Stakeholder capitalism rests on the corporatism as [A] hydra-headed ideology notion that a company’s management with origins in the premodern, and a very owes a duty to more than its shareholders. mixed past — sometimes benignly (it influ- It’s something that Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s enced the formation of West Germany’s founder and executive chairman, has been social market economy) and sometimes not advocating for a long time. A key feature of (it was an important element in pre-war the Great Reset is the idea that stakeholder fascist theory.) The different forms corpo- capitalism should, one way or another, ratism has taken make it tricky to define be adopted. with precision, but they share a common That would reduce a company’s sharecore: the conviction that society should be holders to just another category of organized by and for its principal interest “stakeholder,” effectively transferring the groups — let’s call them “stakeholders” — power that capital should confer away from intermediated by, and ultimately its owners and into the hands of those who subordinate to, the state. The individual administer it. They are then accountable to, does not get a look in. well, it’s not quite clear whom. It’s not diffi-
But, after noting the involvement of cult to grasp why so many corporate “partners” such as Apple, Microsoft, Face- But stakeholder capitalism is a betrayal book, IBM, IKEA, Lockheed Martin, Ericsson of democracy as well as of shareholders. and Deloitte, as some like to suggest it is The power it gives to managers is increas(even allowing for a bit of hype) as “socialist ingly being used to support an agenda Left Marxist” or a “global communist take- influenced by a cabal of activists, NGOs, over plan,” writes Stuttaford recently for the representatives of the “international comNational Review. munity,” and politicians too arrogant to go
Recently, one expression of corporatism, through the usual legislative process. “stakeholder capitalism,” has won strong Some, in my view, too relaxed a view of what stakeholder capitalism is him. To him, it is “a concept so vague that Facebook, IBM, Lockheed Martin et cetera are free to interpret it quite as they wish.”
Goal Achieved
You may remember my story about getting into the livestock publication business. It is what I went to school for. Although I spent lots of time with my grandparents, Granddaddy was a busy man and we didn’t communicate a lot. I knew he knew I was around, but I never realized how keenly he was watching.
Grandmother, on the other hand, was very involved in most of what I did and had her own definite goals for me, like graduating from college. Then becoming gainfully employed.
My first goal in the livestock publication field, of course, was to work on the Arizona Cattlelog, the publication from the Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association (ACGA). Granddaddy read it monthly cover to cover and was deeply involved in the workings of the Association.
In March of my senior year at the University of Arizona, I got a call from Dick Schaus, the publisher of the Cattlelog. He was planning an immediate retirement and had a problem. My grandfather had told him to hire me as his replacement. But he knew that Grandmother would kill him and me both if I didn’t finish my degree.
He left that very hard decision to me. Ultimately, I thought there would be plenty of opportunity to work for the Cattlelog in the future and I had put the time into college and I should finish.
One never knows how wrong you can be. It was more than 20 years before another opportunity arose to work on the Cattlelog. However, the good Lord had other plans for me and I was not able to take the job.
I am proud to report, that after all of this time, I was offered another opportunity to work with the Cattlelog and I jumped at the chance without a moment’s hesitate. My first issue of the Cattlelog will be in the mail in early December. I hope Granddaddy is still paying attention. ▫
