Master Cattle Walt Hackney and Staff a

with the organization for possibly a couple months and I would like to express to the organization to the board members to the members to the staff in the country my gratitude for the tremendous cooperation that you have given me this past year I thought at the time in Omaha a year ago that this job would be a challenge and I thought that that challenge would be gratifying but I didn't dream that I would receive the cooperation that I have gotten from this organization and I want to thank you when we started out we had a program that I went through and over the course of this last year you have seen my staff go through it with you in various meetings we had a program in the cattle department that existed 20 years ago we did not devise anything other than what you had developed yourselves when you develop this organization I think the only credit that I feel like that we can take now in this division and in this cattle department is that we have implemented and amended that program until today I know that it is the most accepted marketing program that exists in this country today now that isn't philosophies and that isn't political talk it's a fact the industry is 100 percent acceptable to our program the industry wants your product desperately the industry has expressed that one weekly by the style of pricing the method of buying from us they have done and their willingness to bargain with us when we feel the need for higher prices in different communities I told you know maja that this program wouldn't blanket the nation overnight as it did 20 years ago when you devised it I told you at that time of the inequities in your program I told you of the lack of experience that because of this you had developed a pretty poor reputation as being marketers of cattle but I can tell you today totally qualified after having had this one years experience in this organization that this is no longer the case we have where we have set this program up as it is intended and I'm sure was intended to function we have an excellent opportunity to market all the volume that you can possibly put up to us for offering now when I started out and it was just exactly that it was an eye and me situation I didn't have much help I didn't have much of an idea really even where to start because I had the identical situation of problems nationwide but I decided the only thing I could do was to take a nearby state work it develop it set it up move to another nearby state and in effect just simply start at a nucleus and work out now we're still doing it and we will probably not complete the program this year if we do I suspect we will have moved too fast because this otter cattle program is one that is probably as intricate in its operational procedures as any one given program of commodities in this organization if it's not done solidly and methodically and terribly full limitedly in its area it won't work we can't move in haphazardly or we'll destroy what we're currently doing in areas where we are in full operation but I pulled people I'd appealed to people that I wanted them to work for me and I had a certain kind of an individual in mind that I wanted I didn't necessarily go for youth and I didn't necessarily go for the old heads of the organization I went for a certain type of an individual and gradually over the last year I have put together a staff that I'm extremely proud of in their ability to market livestock there are a few of them and I'll bet you I miss some and if I do I certainly apologize but I do want you to just simply take a look at a few of our people that we have here today I noticed art Wilson from California I don't know where he sit down art would you mind standing and stay up please art Wilson's the coordinator of livestock cattle in California for me he happens to be in one of those outlying areas that I simply have not effectively set it up to its fullest potential but it will be set up by January you have Gerald Cox the state of Colorado Gerald is right now finishing the program there in the state of Colorado we have art Wilson's daughter sandy and I believe she was the young lady outside the door at the table that was handing out the material sandy is a plant representative in the talero plant in California and an excellent plant representative his Dayton sharp here from Colorado Dayton sharps on the eastern slope coordinating the same as Gerald does on the western slope of Colorado Steve you'll have to help me who am i leaving out urban stri from wisconsin would you mind standing urban there he is Deo Boland from the state of Michigan Melbourne Fisher from the state of Missouri Claire Flynn from the state of Pennsylvania Rubin Hilton brand from the state of Missouri I know I'm gonna leave someone out I probably shouldn't have started this and I I'm gonna ask you to stand up you know who you are that our kettle coordinators for our slaughter kettle division would you stand up please so I can introduce you Gary Nelson from the state of Nebraska Leonard Wood kee from Iowa but dickard from Illinois I think these people I can't mark where are you I couldn't see you back there stay up I couldn't see I'm sorry there's a lot of people coming in that door and I couldn't tell okay Duane wind from Illinois I'm going to quit on this but I do want to give a personal thanks and I think this audience should give these people a personal hand for the job well done the the emphasis that I have tried to come up with is one of an appeal for help have qualified nature it's been it's been one of a necessity I had to have help I looked into our own staff when I was looking for people to assist me and I found a group of people that had at several things going for him they had a lot of vitality they happened to have about a youth on their side they also had a certain amount of dedication for this organization and they had a desire to expand their current knowledge and to become more productive for you that group of people are the ones that I personally because of my daily exposure to them have become extremely proud of and the context of this meeting today is going to reflect to you as members of the National Farmers Organization that you may or may not need industry people to come into your organization to guide you successfully because I am going to introduce to you today people who absolutely for one reason or another that I'll explain as I introduce them had no prior knowledge of either livestock or cattle or hogs or the National Farmers Organization period but they had one thing going for him was that willingness to want to learn and they had in my opinion at the time a certain amount of managerial ability so when I gave a lot of thought and when we in Corning were deciding exactly how our commodity meetings were going to be conducted this year in st. Louis Missouri I was the only one that said I don't want industry in there in the first place I'm smarter than anybody I could bring in and in the second place I don't need to impress the cattlemen of this organization with the fact that industry is welcoming us with open arms or that we are building a rapport we don't have to do that anymore in this organization ladies and gentlemen they want us they've expressed the one with the power of pricing they have given us and as an example one week ago your organization set an all time historical high in the USDA marketing archives of records for Cal pricing on a block a cow sold in the northern states now why do we need industry to stand up here in front of us and tell us how much they need us we don't what we do need as members and as potential shippers or current shippers or new members or non-members thinking on it we need people guiding and bargaining that you can look at and when you walk out of here you will know that you have got an excellent talent representing you that you'll have no reservations about putting your product - for the bargaining tables that's the emphasis I wanted to take today and so when I started out with that idea my peers up at Corning Iowa had a lot of reservation because they had seen these people that I'll introduce to you today when we first brought them in but they hadn't seen this super EXTREME development that they had shown me over the course of this last year so with that little opening comment I'm going to show you how I'm getting a lot of my work done for me I don't have to stand up anymore for an hour an hour and a half and bore you with a lot of background I'm gonna show you what you've got in front of you but before I can show you what you have in front of you I must remind you of a concept that is unequaled in the marketing structure of the world today and how it was originally conceived and what its original intent was and what collective bargaining really means to the National Farmers Organization or to anyone else in this nation that has an agricultural product and last summer the president of the state of Montana Phil Olson invited me to come to Montana and have a two or three meeting series with his cattlemen in that state and while I was in Great Falls Montana we had had our meeting the meeting was over everyone had left and I looked back at the back of a room and here was four or five guys standing around in a circle with a darling little lady down on her hands and knees in the middle and I thought now I must get involved in this it's bound to be interesting I walked back there and this lady had a flannel board laid out on the floor and was going through collective bargaining for these men and I stood there and I watched it because I learned more in ten minutes than I had since the day I come with this organization about your original concept of setting up collective bargaining and when I was trying to decide what I would do here in st. Louis I also had the opportunity to go back to the state of Montana and talk at their state convention this year and while I was there I saw this lady again and I asked her if she would mind coming this year down here and presenting this to you as a membership she was gratified in doing it she was anxious to do it and a little on her background her and her husband have been members as I understand it since 1968 and in the state of Montana it's been said to me that they consider this couple as mr. and mrs. nfo in the state well we're not talking about her husband we're talking about this lady that's got this talent her name is Bobby Cox she's been an elementary school teacher in Montana she's had practically every kind of an involvement with this organization I suspect you can she's deeply entrenched in its philosophies she's deeply entrenched in her desire to express those philosophies and its original intent to anyone willing to listen and without much more to do I would like to present to you today a person that taught me an awful lot and maybe there's some old members here that can learn too and without that I would introduce to you Bobby Cox from Fergus County Montana I want you to know what qualifies me to talk to farmers and ranchers because I was a kindergarten teacher but I want to explain that when you get when you go into a room with five year old you have to remember but almost all of them are just as intelligent as you are a lot of them are more intelligent than you are all they lack is experience and knowledge when you go out to talk to farmers and ranchers you remember they are just as intelligent as you are a lot of them are more intelligent than you are all they lack is experience and knowledge in collective bargaining and if you're going to teach kindergarten you have to hold a respect for yourself and a very deep respect for the child you work with and if you're gonna do nfo work you had better respect yourself and have a very deep respect for the farmers and ranchers you go out to contact this is the story of agriculture where we are where we have been and where we want to go we are at low farm prices we want to get above the black line into parity and what is parity parity is a balance of the economic powers within the nation where industry has just as much income coming into it so it can spend that income or buy the services from labor and agriculture where labor has just as much income decent wages coming into them where they can buy the product from agriculture and the products from industry and who are eager culture has to have the same balance of income coming into their industry that they can buy from industry and pay labour why don't we have parity because we as farmers and ranchers have not assumed the responsibility we have pushed it upon somebody else because we don't want to do it somebody else had to you can't go to a grocery store and fill up your cart go to the checkout counter and and then it's a lady there doesn't have a price on it and you say to her well I've got these groceries I want them I need them I've got to take them home and the lady says well I don't know what they're gonna be who's gonna have to price it you're going to have to this is what we did to the industry we have to work with just above us or with us we demand it that they put the price on it for us one of those is the grain trade it only takes two men sitting from across from each other at a desk or a table and either Minneapolis or Portland and all they have to do is buy ten thousand bushels from this man he can turn around and buy 10,000 bushels back from the other man they put it out on ticker tape farmers and ranchers turn on the radio and the TV open the paper and that's their prices and we have the meat trade now it takes a few more to do that I don't know why they're about five so or that amount that meats usually in Chicago and they decide what they're going to pay that day they need the meat they want the meat but they have two sets price on it we haven't we forced them to so they they decide what they're going to pay that day put it out on the yellow sheet and you turn on the radio that's how you get your price there is a third one that has a great deal of influence upon our prices and that is the United States government because they do have cheap food policies they do have foreign trade policies they do have consumers and you know something they also got a lot of farmers telling them what they want anything but price I guess they even tell them to do that for me I don't think we have anybody to blame but ourselves we have tried lots of things and trying to get out of this we've tried imports you know you hear the cry stop the imports I remember only 5% of the meat imported into the United States is only 5% we have 95% you don't find any meat thrown away it's all eaten it's not backed up behind slaughter plants it's all taken care of all we have to do is block our meat together and tell them you can't have ours if you bring that in we could stop it overnight another thing we've thought would solve our problems you know I kind of call this alright somebody say things we chasing the rabbit I caught chasing each other around bushes gimmicks these are gimmicks they're all gimmicks because because we don't want to price it so we cook up these other little things so another little thing we cooked up with exports got to export more ok this also goes along with LSD hey what's LSD lie of supply and demand and I want to show you why it's a lie the grain trade needs the grain they have a contracted usually and they they I have to fulfill their contracts so in order to get enough grain to fill their contracts they lower the price that makes you deliver that much more grain to meet your financial obligations do you remember when you had $5 grain what did you do you used it as collateral you borrowed against it you built elevators and you stored it in it and now what's it worth yes shutters sold it on contract orderly marketing through the National Farmers Organization another thing we've tried is let's eat more I guess some call it promotion I just plain caught eat more going to eat more beef going to eat less pork you're older you're only gonna put one dish of meat on the table let's face it your wife is not gonna put a smorgasbord out for you so yeah and you're only if you you're right okay well eat more you just can't okay another thing another thing that we've tried is we go to Washington DC we're always asking Washington DC to do something for us write letters send a telegram call them on the telephone meet them talk with them tell them what you want but we're only 5% population and the other it's done and what they want and they want cheap food because they don't understand that cheap food could lead to no food now we have done some things that I think are a little more sensible these others are really kind of short-lived gimmicks we have formed the Farmers Union the Farm Bureau cow bells the women involved in pharmacogenomics these are service organizations and they're necessary they have done as a good service you can use the legislative programs you can use their social programs you can buy products from them and they have been necessary you built them you use them and they've been necessary cow bells and the wife do a good job of publicity and just public relations but they don't deal in commodities and it's only when you sell your commodities that you get your income so the farmer then he forms some coops some marketing associations pools you got calf pools wolf pools fools cotton pulls green pools orange poles being pools but they always compete against each other and they are not national also invariably these pools marketing associations in coops will attach themselves to a specific buyer and that buyer whether you like it or not always works within the giant three that are above the top of the the line they're the grain trade the meat trade and the government you got a good buyer but he's got to stay within within the old marketing system he can't change it I also want to point out something else to you and it's psychological when you market through a marketing association or a co-op or a wolf pool you do so for the specific purpose of trying to block your production together to get the highest price this makes a ceiling because psychologically everybody else out on the countryside you know you got the grapevine everybody knows what everybody is really kind of selling for within 50 cents because you cuz you're like good but anyway psychologically they all they all think they know what you're going to get and so they all say well Joe might get a little more but that sounds like that's the market and that's a ceiling I want you all to look up at the ceiling come on look up at the ceiling this is a kindergarten class look up at the ceiling what's it doing to you isn't it looking down at you and doesn't it keep the heat on your financial pocketbook okay now there I haven't talked about the national farmers organization and the collective bargaining part of it psychologically when you block your stuff together the guys next door that won't go national farmers organization they say well I know what they got my buyers I'm going to give me anything less and he's gonna give me a little more to we're all all bargain with him a little and that's a floor okay now look at the floor what do you do on the floor you'll walk on it you sit on a gentle lay on it and you'll put your cigarette butts out on it that's my comparison between a floor and a ceiling but we in the National Farmers Organization we know where the ceiling is we know where the floor is what we want to do take that floor right on up there and push the whole thing up and set it there we did have another movement that I do want to mention and it's the strikers the American agricultural movement I respect them they had courage they acknowledged that production is where you get your price how you sell and they started with the production line they were going to not plant and a few things like this it sound like they might block their production they're gonna set prices they want to parity but they didn't have it on contract they didn't have a system to work it through consequently they have slipped down on the bottom half of the circle where they now are a service organization I still respect them all but I pray to God that they don't try to form something to compete against us we've always competed against each other instead of working with each other we've gotta have contracts and this is what the strikers didn't happen I don't know how to tell you how important I think contracts are did you know that but I don't think any of you caught it last night when Orrin Lee Staley told you that for the first time in history contracts were signed written by farmers and signed so that we know the price we're gonna have before we go into the year and spend the money we know what money we're going to have in Montana feeder calves did you catch that those calves aren't even born yet did you understand that say Joe I want you to stand up jump jump don't please Joe's a little on the heavy side and those calves we already sold are in the cows and they make those cows look like they're little on the heavy side but they've been sold thank you Joe yep okay I just want you to know that we know in Montana we couldn't have those contracts if there hadn't been a foundation built by you guys in the mid Midwest what do you call yourselves a corn bill did you started this an AFOL national farmers organization okay we have the education now in pricing our production we have a lot of experience in collective bargaining we have the membership and we have the production and we could set our prices we have the staff and the professionalism and they keep asking why aren't we members completing our goals of setting our prices that cost plus living expenses I think it's because farmers do not want fair prices I want to go through it with you on that you know your enemy is you never need to get out of your chair your enemy he's sitting right there you ever heard the story get big and efficient buy out your neighbor now remember the only way you're going to buy out your neighbors if he sells to you I'm the only way to get him to sell is when he gets slowly forced out and gives up through low farm prices if you're going to get big and efficient y'all got to have low farm prices you know about rob Peter pay Paul that's where you sell your place to your neighbor at such a high price that the production off of that land I'll never pay for the land and you hope he loses it back to you plus his there's another one that I don't have down there and that's misery loves company and you've got to remember the guy that lots of times you sit across from at your financial institution didn't make it in agriculture and we have a lousy measuring stick in agriculture we measure our success by whether we beat our neighbor or not and when you're sitting across from him and he isn't farming anymore you represent that you beat him and he can't be too sympathetic for you there are also a lot of other farmers that might be going broke and they have a tendency to just as soon everybody else go broke too because of our lousy measuring stick of success we need to reevaluate what success is then the third one that I have down there is cussedness now maybe nfo didn't qualify and the other two but I think we probably all qualify and number three I know I do in about 1974 Adam Switzer our national director from Montana called us up in the telephone and he was real happy but also very apprehensive because he said the cattle industry now says they'll pay any price we want all we have to do is get it together and I was saying to Adam great this is wonderful this is what we've been after but you know what I was thinking I was thinking no no not yet I think if we can just hold off two more years the neighbor down the road is gonna go broke I actually did it took me two years before I finally decided that I had to quit that because for two years I kept trying to convince myself I hadn't really thought that but I had and I figure if I had you have the last one is cowards I don't think too many of us been in that category either because it took courage to join NFL but I want to read something to you when the Hebrews reached the land that had been promised to them by God and the land is God's to give or take they sent 12 men into the country and towns to scout the opposition ten of those men came back afraid they represented the percentage of cowards of their nation they said there are giants in there this is where agriculture is there are three giants that price our commodities the grain trade the meat trade in the United States government they have enslaved us to the old marketing system but we have God's promise in second Timothy two six that we shall have the first share of the crops now what I want to ask you guys is do we have the courage to collect on a promise from God and do you have the courage to ask God to help yourself and these men collect on that promise thank you thank you very much Bobby that's the first reason that I said what I said that I don't know exactly if this organization absolutely has to have industry at your disposal I don't know for sure if you haven't got talents within your own people that have never been exploited I don't know how much exposure Bobby Cox has had but I know how much exposure the next persons had absolutely none we got in a little trouble a year ago right after I came with this organization with plant representation we were having a hard time finding qualified people so we decided to take another Avenue and go for people who we felt at least had the capacity to learn and Steve Bohr was a plant rep for me at that time in Omaha Nebraska and we were needing to get him into the country as an area supervisor and we couldn't find a plant rep and one day he called me up and he said I think I have found an individual that I think I can train to at least be warm bodied enough to write in the packinghouse force now this individual that he referred to we hired and Steve Daly worked with him as a plant rep and Daly would express surprise at this area learning would you turn those lights on please he would express surprise of this individuals ability to learn so quickly and then that surprise turned into amazement and finally it became necessary for me to have an individual who was a complete plant rep and I was searching through our people and Steve commented to me Walt why don't you bring Ron Shaw into the Home Office I said Steve how can you say that with all the problems that you felt like you'd encounter with him and he said yes but have you seen what he has accomplished he said I think he is that man were looking for so we called Ron and asked him to come over and we visited with him explain these responsibilities as being primarily in charge of the plant representation that we have now Ron Shaw's home is Fayetteville Arkansas and if you've been in Fayetteville you've not seen a multitude of cattle and certainly not many packing houses and if you've been a town kid growing up raising Cain all over the back alleys you certainly haven't known what the national farmers organization is that was what he came in equipped with I want to show you what he's equipped with now as your representative in setting up these programs that you heard Bobby Cox illustrate to you as was your initial intention the only thing we've done is take that original concept maybe Express some professionalism in it if that's the correct term I'm not sure but we've had to have a qualified person that had the talent to go in as the frontman to get things done before I could perform what my obligation is to you and with that I want to present to you Ron Shaw from the Home Office Ron because I'm not from an agricultural background it is a personal pleasure for me to speak before this group today the cattle program of the national farmers organization is designed to bring you maximum profits through collective bargaining because of a new and professional approach that program is working I've been asked to discuss the methods the cattle division uses to organize and new marketing areas organizing a new area is like building a barn before you can begin construction you first have to survey the area to determine if it will suit your needs in the cattle division we look for several things pertinent to success in the area we look for the number of cattle available for slaughter the kill capacity shipping distance to the local packing houses the activity of the membership and the potential for growth among our members once the site has been completely surveyed we're ready to do the groundwork at this point initial contact is made with the local