Farming Isn't As Easy As It Might Sound

Straight Talk with Sam Raising cattle sounds mighty easy until you get kicked in the gut by a thousand-pound steer. I raised cattle for a lot of years—some good, and some bad. Long enough to know that if you're looking for a quick, easy buck, you'd best go looking elsewhere. Like everyone else who's done it, I've been trampled and kicked, and spent my fair share of cold winter nights pulling calves and fighting to keep them alive. Pretty soon, you learn it's not the bruises or the bitter cold that keep you up at night; it's the fear of the bottom dropping out of the market and years of work being flushed down the drain. It's not always fun or easy, but it's worth doing. It's a life worth living. Just about any farmer or rancher you'll ever meet would give you the shirt off their back to keep you warm. They've been through tough times and aren't afraid of temporary discomfort to help their neighbors or fellow Americans put food on the table. The problem is that farmers and ranchers aren't price makers; we're price takers. We don't set prices in grocery stores. In fact, only about half of what you pay for a pound of beef ends up going back to the farmer or rancher who raised that animal from birth. If you want to get to the root of the problem, you've got to follow the money. Some of that dollar is going to the grocery store. They've got to pay staff and keep the shelves stocked, but it's probably a lot less than you'd think. The reality is that most of it goes to one of the big four beef processors, the middlemen that control 85 percent of the market. That's part of the reason why, despite a good market right now, 150,000 farmers and ranchers have left the cattle business since 2017, and nationwide our cattle herd is at a 75-year low. Prices might be high in the grocery store, but high input prices, combined with half the retail dollar going elsewhere, mean the outlook isn't so rosy if you're standing knee-deep in manure sorting cattle. How do we fix this, then? We've got to increase competition and give cattle producers the certainty they need to make long-term investments to grow their own herds. Reopening county Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices yesterday and the plan released this week by President Trump's Department of Agriculture are both steps in the right direction. We've got to increase competition in the meatpacking industry, give farmers and ranchers better risk management tools, improve access to capital for producers, and, most importantly, ensure that when you see "Product of USA" on a cut of beef at the grocery store, you know that beef came from an animal that was born and raised by an American farmer. That said, this isn't an overnight fix. No silver bullet's going to solve this problem overnight. Cattle are different than hogs or chickens. It takes years, not months or weeks, to increase beef production. The best thing we can do right now is stand with American farmers and ranchers. Sincerely, Sam Graves