Master Convention Livestocks Highlights C 90 b

heaven's sakes take advantage of that and extend your ownselves out to your neighbors this winter we're going to have an extended effort of a training sessions into our trading areas now in that we are going to come into those communities with staff we're going to do our doggonedest to involve the shipping members of our program whatever program it would happen to involve in this case water cattle when you walk out of those sessions you are going to have better than an average grasp of the exact procedure of your marketing program that pertains to you now for heaven's sakes get rid of this intimidation get rid of this inadequate feeling and get down that road and talk to that producer because I can point out a man sitting in this audience right now that can get in his car in a state of Maine I guarantee you can come home by Friday night with 20 new memberships and that's about as many stops as he will have made you know why there's no intimidation to that man there is nothing inferior to his feeling he walks in with total knowledge that the man in his state was bit 84 on Holstein stairs or 87 excuse me this guy sold him for a dollar for he also had cows and you correct me Kenton that the man was bid seventy eight dollars on and I'm not talking one or two I'm talking trailer vote and he ended up getting and he got the cow sold for a dollar in one sense a pound now do you have to feel inferior with that kind of a track record sometimes you remind me of Secretariat backing up ass-backwards in the starting blocks turn around and go the direction you have at your capacity to go the best end that's straightforward and hard I've said it before and I mean it it's a hard business and it's a tough business it's a very serious business we in the home office and the people like Kenton and the art Wilson and the other staff for the sake of missing someone we have made that total commitment to you now for heaven's sakes take advantage of us put us to work for you any questions you have talk to Steve feel free to call me talk to the directors that are in your community get the word to us but we've got to have your involvement Steve I'm really proud of you I appreciate the chance to come in here and thanks for coming to the convention ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to present to you the vice president of Packer land packing company in Green Bay Wisconsin mr. Gene staffs this represents the second opportunity you have give me to attend your convention I'm truly honored to ask to address your organization I would like to divide my talks into three areas one in a fall as we see it from Packer lon - you have a stake in the packing industry 3 the decades of the 80s as we see them we at pack of the land virtually we remember your early organization days as you struggled for identity you know tried to obtain recognition have your voice heard in the marketplace those were truly frustrating times and there were many people who felt that you could not survive and probably many of them didn't want you to but you've changed and you work some changes and left an impact I'd like to address those changes a you serve to make consumers more mindful of the importance of the role of Agriculture and food and total economic picture you've helped make consumers and the public in general aware of the poor return the farmers are getting for their hours of hard work and huge investments in producing food in abundance at low cost to consumers you successfully call the nation's attention to the economic plight of the small farmer you tried to deny repudiate the law of supply and demand and discover that it's working very alive in every country in the world so you decided to work with it and use it as a result today you have put together a sophisticated working collective bargaining system we have seen anyone put together in the livestock business why has your bargaining concept work you have put knowledgeable people at the head of your sales task that you didn't have there before people who knew livestock breeds yields values and markets you develop integrity when you say you're going to deliver 500 head at the price that's what you deliver you have people representing you who are smart enough to know what the cattle the Packer wants how he wants them and when he wants them and then negotiate for the top dollar for that supply in total you've grown up and are providing a very needed useless service for your membership and to the Packer we congratulate you on this now let me zoom in the second part of the message you have a stake in the packinghouse industry you've heard of it but progressed to vestigation x' of meatpacking industries allocation of price-fixing rigging of the yellow sheet of not ballistic practices most of these have gone on proven and represents more politicking than realism yet this in duster is going through a change and it is affecting you the beef back industry is a narrow margin industry with profits normally average one cent on the sale dollar that little leaves us with a little room for air some mistakes from 1975 through 1978 cattlemen lost on full dollars in col.caf and feeding operations herds were liquidated they win the 79 rule 1979 all around we entered a new phase of the cattle cycle with marketing's reduced by 15 to 18 percent from January 1 to August 31st 1979 263 packing houses and producers in the United States shut their doors numerous have done since although the largest Packer survived quite well and improved their share in the marketplace many of the independent independent Packers didn't make it and those who survived were quite weakened we were one of the surviving independence but retrenched from a four plan operation to a 2 plan operation slaughtering and processing about 1,200 head per day the independent packer is a very vital link in this meat chain and we of course are grateful that you have seen fit to recognize this and actively support the independent packer by the same token we do like doing business with you because you control enough supply to make it really worthwhile doing business with you you would not have that similar value to a large packer let me make you further comment on the lard packer syndrome it has become quite popular to look for whipping boys to explain our ills but things are not always as they seem to be the Packer of the 1920s armored Swift cutter hate Wilson have slipped to the position of secondary importance in this beef slaughtering industry indeed they have concentrated and diversified engaging in Adam values in their products through further processing they were unseated by a new breed of packer the IBP the MP XL menthe Hertz and dispensers these Packers came with in with new hottie automated plants lower pill costs lower labor costs in the skillful merchandising of box beef that has created an unprecedented amande for the beef and changed the industry forever however their sheer size and aggressiveness soon led to charges of price manipulations as they moved in and out of the markets it is true that they exercised tremendous amount of influence yet your organizations such as n fo and feeders will generally have to make the decision as well how much control you want any one Packer to have on the market your marketing programs support of the independent will determine whether you will hel deed have an effective competitive market we have learned some other hard lessons in the past thirty six months the Packer is far more concerned about the producer than the producer is about the Packer that is a mistake you produced a hundred and twenty-nine pounds of beef carcass weight for every man woman and child in 1975 it went broke doing it if you'll produce a hundred pounds per capita in 1980 you will make some money doing it now that ought to be telling you something don't overlook the factor called a man in what the housewife is willing to pay for something we're killing two million hogs a week that small hogs in six weeks ago and yet they are 5 to 6 cents a pound higher in price because of the tremendous taste that has been generated for pork and at the same time there is currently a relatively good demand for beef producers Packers need to be viewed as partners for progress then that's the adversaries it is in our best interest to do the best marketing job of your products as possible you have to allow us to be strong enough to that that strength just what a guarantee supply is able to achieve a guaranteed supply however does not mean that we or other Packers should be whipsaw it from week to week with despite dangling in front of us that we fully can't count on you're not worth much to us on that basis and we aren't worth much to you that brings me to our last point what can we expect in the 80s the 10% inflation rate will not abate that along with $2 a gallon gasoline will put livestock people into a bad cost price freeze farm products will have to rise you will have you will see more 75 need a higher dollar cattle and you will cattle numbers are in the rebuilding phase the cycle and you will probably peaking out in 1985 we hope the farmers will not over expand your ideas of selling sales are good supply managers suggestions to keep supplies when levels that will allow you retain profits monitor coddle supplies keep your membership inform as to where they are in the cycle and encourage them not to over expand there are reasons to believe that the world of man of export meat will continue to expand in 1980 and then as they did in the 70s we urge you to lend your support in that development as cattle numbers increase packinghouse gap capacities will have to increase to accommodate the new supply new Packer producer arrangements will develop as parties increase their appreciation for each other you've picked up a lot of marketing expertise in the last several years you've developed an image of credibility and responsibility go with that same plan in the next decade and you shall make us everlasting contribution to the livestock industry in conclusion we at Packer Island really believe that our two parties are in this together and are mutually interesting having strong profitable livestock industry thank you would you please welcome from Newport New York Anita Maxwell gotta be a little short this nation I got kind of long-winded this morning we've had many experiences out there I think the point I want to bring out to you people is if you're discouraged that your county is dead nothing's going on you know we also go through that we've gone through spots in our state for one reason or another where we've been beaten in the milk industry by the cooperative's and it took a few years for the stuff to hit the fan and the cooperative's now are buckling under terribly with large assessments and all kinds of financial losses darielis Eastern North producers all these people they've reduced the farmers to practically nothing you know they'll give them a termination notice some of the independents will and say you've got 30 days to find a new market and sometimes these farmers families been on the farm for maybe seven generations and here they were left without a market and it was only our organization that came in and helped them I want to impress upon you that there's nothing that farmers working together can't do we had a little incident when we first tried marketing milk in the state of New York and it took us several months to even get a license to market our own milk and we had given our handlers termination notices saying we were going to market through on fo and the state refused to give us a license and the Dave come that we were supposed to quit ship into our independence and one handler thought he was going to teach us a lesson in the fire who were shipping to him only happen to be one of our there was the only 27 of us that started this first in the Northeast so they told John well you think that nfo so great just see what it does with your milk now of course we had no real oats in the whole northeast at all and we just didn't know what to do we had one of our farmers bought a ball tank truck and he was ready to pick up milk any time so we got our heads together one night we thought well poor John shouldn't suffer for the rest of us so we called it the midnight ride of Ditka Briza who was their trucker he went out every other night about 11 12 o'clock in the dark and he picked John's milk up and he brought it around and he distributed into three or four of our tanks you know weighed how measured how much he put in our tanks we all came up in milk production that for a week or two real good you know about four or five of us and after about two weeks went by the handler came back to John and he said well I guess I've taught you a good lesson I guess I'll take your milk from now on and he said what do you been doing with it and John says Big Creek out back still isn't even full yet you know but it just shows what farmers working together can do so anyways we've gone along we haven't had the participation in the meat program we should we're working on our dairy now it's going to be a few months before we got a plant in there that's going to be able to handle it so Walt was out in our area in June and he was telling about saturating the county trying to do get all your production out of one County don't leave any stone unturned and it kind of kept preying on my mind and I thought well we live in herkimer county and we do have a fair membership in the county but they weren't participating we have an excellent cold cow program and they hadn't been participating like they should so long about 1st of September when I got a lull in there between the farmers doing their hand and going into silo filling I started out on the road every few afternoons a week and we have a large dairy farm my husband and I we have 11 children and a large dairy farm and kids all help us some are married some are there on the farm but I started going out every year I just became obsessed with us I thought why aren't these farmers joining why aren't they participating at least in the meat program and then we did inventory all their milk we've got the milk ready to go when this plant is open so I started door-to-door and Devon had told us that the last board meeting I'm the only lady member on the board by the way of directors and he tell us at the board meeting the end of July to go out and try to sign up five young farmers under 35 and I really didn't think there were that many in my County but I went home and I started looking and I found several several and we and I've been on the FHA committee it helped me tremendously in getting to these people they almost all applied for loans so I knew where they were and after we granted them the loans I within you know a comfortable length of time a month or two I got around to them and I signed up a hundred percent of the young FHA people under 35 I was batting real good for a while there before the farmers got back in the fields again I was hitting about 75% of all contacts and by the way I found it most successful to sit down with a husband and wife together because quite often the wife was the one that prodded dad in to join and you know he'd brag how great a milk production he was getting and how great his crops were and she'd say but we aren't paying our bills you know that and she'd be the one that would pride him into doing it so anyways this went along and we kept pushing it and pushing it urging them to join and we were having tremendous success we had to layoff again in October because everybody was back in the fields along about second week in November I decided to send them all a letter because we weren't getting that participation and my husband was going door-to-door after I was signing him I seemed to have a little better knack and find him than some of the men did in our area so I was doing that he would sometimes go or our county president would go with me and then he would go around and proud the older members we still weren't getting their participation so I sent them all a letter telling them that we were going to conduct an experiment since we had signed up so many in this one County we were asking all the Central counties to ship every cold cow and care for just 60 days now this wouldn't kill him because we were getting we're getting six and seven cents over the sheet anyways we have a beautiful program so I said just try for 60 days and see what will happen well the phone call started coming in unbelievable and I got so elated after about a week we went to the packer and we said gee give us a little more incentive you want more meat will get you more but do something and he said well we could use more kill on Monday because our butchers aren't very busy so I'll give you an extra penny on the cows and two cents on the kids so a week later Thanksgiving afternoon my youngsters folded the papers I wrote a trust another 350 letters and told him you're doing fantastic the Packers happy he's giving us an extra premium get your calls in by Sunday noon and you know we ordinarily by Monday morning if our house there's several others that pick up in our area but we pick up one end of Herkimer County if we got six calls Monday by Monday morning we're doing good well the first week we got 19 then we went on to 30 and the last week we got 51 calls and it just started mushrooming and the thing that we were doing that I would urge all of you to do if you're doing anything like this is after you wait a week or so they get their check go back my husband goes back and talks to them is there any problem do you understand the check were you satisfied and we have had all of them satisfied if you had questions but it's real good Steve cause it's servicing them and I guess that's what you have to do but at one point I've run out to these farmers as we were signing them was even if you sold all your production to a cattle jockey or an auction or anybody and got the same identical price you're getting through on fo which they don't but even if you did you're giving your production away you aren't doing anything with it all by shipping it through the organization you're building a program not only for yourself but for the future of your own youngsters and this is one thing that really concerns me seeing these young kids that are barely paying interest on their loans or have the FHA loans so anyways it has worked quite well I have got a lot of time I'm not going to go into much detail because well it's gotta be out of here in a little while but I just want to tell you I urge everyone of you especially the women you know men cannot refuse a woman and I have never used any womanly wiles on them at all I guarantee you I'm dead serious when I organize I flatter the old guys once in a while town they're cute or something but you know it's hard for an old grandmother to get very far with the kids under 35 although they seem to I hear manky says you got a stack of booth with young people the young people come to me maybe because I have so many children many of them have been in school as my kids play ball it's school with our kids they look up to me I I've helped them in a lot of situations this is one thing even though we are a dairy area there's a lot of other things we can do we help them in the FHA loan department we help them with their own handlers when they have a problem we help them any way we can where they feel there's a need for it and you've got a total organization supporting it even in legislation many of them understand the good work that Chuck Frazier nan do in Washington for us so there's many facets to this too selling it so just don't be discouraged because you say our County's debt our county's been dead too lots of times our county president didn't even have nerve enough to go out and ask anyone to join the organization when our pay price was real low but I've never been ashamed of belonging to this organization I've always been proud I'm I've always held my head high and believed in what I was doing and I think that probably is the thing that impresses farmers the most you have to have your production going there first every pound of your milk and meat or green or whatever has got to be going through the system you have got to feel the same aches and pains that they're feeling and then they'll believe what you're doing is the right thing but there's a difference in attitude if you haven't and asked farmers to join the national farmers organization a long time get out and try it and don't give up I've gone back to people who you know maybe eight ten years ago ran our man out with a gun or a pitchfork and I'm not joking it actually happened especially during the time of the milk strike in 67 when there were a lot of hard feelings made in our county but I've gone back and these people have joined and they're brigands you know as soon as they signed their name on the membership agreement it's all of a sudden it's their organization what can I do and then they'll defend it like it was their wife you know most you do defend you're wise even though a girl whether once in a while but it can be done and I want to urge every one of you if I could just make somebody in every County do what we have done in Herkimer County New York this thing would be done right across the United States and it only took me you know I'm an old grandmother with this big farm I help them still run the farm I got all these kids in the house to take care of yet and the kids help us tremendously they believe in what we're doing but I only get out a few afternoons a week would you believe I announced on the radio one day I said the only NFL members can take part in this experiment we're doing for 60 days and would you believe to farmers called me and said can I ship meat and not milk and I said sure and how much does it cost oblige $75 you're like it always did I'm the only one that sends Stephen typewrite typewritten membership for Krugman's I get the information over the phone type them up even in the dairy I've signed up quite a few over the telephone and I Sunderman all time threatened but they're believing in what we're doing they realize they've got to be organized and in Herkimer County New York today I've signed 65 new members just going out a few afternoons the last couple months and we now have 40% of the farmers ship well not all shipping but 40% of the dairy farmers in Herkimer County belong to the National Farmers organiz and we hope when we get this cheese plant going by spring forty percent are going to be shipping every pound of their production with us and there's no other way you know that we've got to be organized maybe we don't need it at our age but our kids sure need it and there's no organization in this world that's going to get them across the cost of production plus a reasonable profit but the national farmers organization but I'd like for you to hear Kenton Bailey from Maine thank you Steve I'm not going to talk very long it used to take me six hours to give a two hour presentation I've become a professional so I worked one-on-one most of the time and I get my work done in a good ear less time than that but you heard what these folks have had to say to you today and I want to emphasize and try to pick on a point that I think a lot of us as members of the national farmers organization of missing I've had people come up to me and speak to me at this convention about many different things but I hope you don't look at the necktie I'm wearing or the sports jacket the manner in which I'm dressed and think of me any different than a fellow farmer because that's what I was born where I was born was on a farm I still live there I've never been anything but a farmer but I'm like every single other person I'm a human being first so I try to attack the problem by looking at all the people that I meet up and down those country roads as human beings and it's paid off very good dividends I hope for the National Farmers Organization I boast about it to myself only time will tell whether it's that way or not but I'll tell you some basic principles that we have to follow if we're going to get this job done I was asked by Walt a year ago April we go to work for me Department well I really was working for the meat department because when I go up and down country roads talking to people I enroll them as a member of the National Farmers Organization and everything they produced if we've got a program going I automatically tell them that they're not doing anything until they're part of it but I want to prove to you that price won't buy membership unless you and I the people that are going to get the greatest amount out of it go and tell the world about it show it in a manner and a look around this room and I see there must be some people that are proud of it because they got these things on and I wear them all the time when I represent nfo sometimes people think of us like this and sometimes they look at us like that being a little backwards but nevertheless I wear one of them because I want them to know who it is that's coming to talk to them the attitude has changed so much I can remember when we used to take those signs off the vehicles because you wanted to get in the dooryard and maybe in the house to talk with somebody before they found out who you were but you see if we have people like Walt Hackney and Steve Bohr and many others working for us and we don't take advantage of it we might just well go back and have something else to attract attention like shoot some calves and put them in a hole or some hogs have a milk dump or do something else because you're going to have to attract attention and if we don't care enough to go out and talk to other people about what we're doing I doubt if you're ever going to attract him because I want to give you some examples we got involved with the same program that Anita has back in the summer of 1977 we've gone through the whole bit we joined during the milk hold in action in 67 we got to ship in meat before 68 got out of spring we went through everything we didn't always have a plant rep everything would go good for a few possum belly loads and the next thing you know everybody be mad because the plant rep forgot to be there because he had to put in some bale hay so the animals got killed the way you in so did the members we don't have that problem today we used to have the deal where you shipped you animals you waited three weeks for your check because it didn't come through a custodial account the Packer sent the check we don't have that today we ship the animals and five days later the members get the check in the mail from a bonded insured custodial account you can't beat that with a club we have people up our way they still want to go the old way and they wait sometimes two months for that check from their local buyer now that isn't the way the law is supposed to work but it shows you what you do when you go on the outside we've learned a lot from the national farmers organization and to tell you if you wonder staying now I is a dairy farmer I never understood except when that cow couldn't milk any longer she had to go for beef I didn't know the difference between cannas and cutters in bulnes and breakers but I can tell you that if anybody's marketing a cow today there's one tremendous amount of difference the people that ina and therefore members are by way sometimes see as much difference as 20 cents a pound at 20 bucks a hundred less between the cannon cutter price and the break-up price now we have a few people up our way it's kind of you know it you can really if you keep your eyes open and you look around you can really see what's happening we don't have many beef producers in Maine that I full-fledged 100 percent farmers you couldn't calm ranchers anyway because usually they're a retired airplane pilot a banker that's been pensioned off a schoolteacher that made a lot of money through the Consolidated School District it rather strikes you rather funny and they didn't start farming before they retired the nest egg is used but something funny is having though you can talk to those people about joining and shipping because you see they don't like to lose money when you've got money you don't like to lose it maybe after you've lost it long a long time you know you don't feel it quite so bad but the point is that I'm trying to make is you might think because we keep trying this every once in a while it'll go on in our members I'll give you an example last May we got up to shipping our cattle through an NFL sale in New York and that's about 800 miles we pick up cattle it come to a collection point and then they put on a opossum belly and they go out 800 miles to market the closest ones go over 400 they were getting as high as a dollar eighteen and a dollar 19 other words we get a higher price if they dress over 600 the local market was running about 90 cents a pound on big thin Holstein candles and colors that's something to address 600 pounds now now that's quite an advantage isn't it throw NFL and people instead of joining and getting more production of saying hey gosh this is the goods you don't have to do it you don't have to go those meetings you don't have to live from the Andes you know you can go on the outside you know what happened to the meat market you saw what Steve put up there by July 4th when the talk in the USDA was we got to bring in more box beef from Argentina sometimes the market would drop 12 cents the yellow sheep would drop 12 cents in a week's time you know what that did to the cattle industry in this country but do you know something the one thing I think that most of our members forget is if we're going to win this war in it's obvious that we aren't winning it with the amount of members in production we've got we only have two choices right that's either go get more of those that are already members and get them to participate that's one alternative right the other alternative is to go get some more members and get them to participate there's no other thing you can do you can hire 10 wallhack knees and 25 more Steve boards and if we don't go get more members or get more of our members to participate what's the object we have another thing have way now let me tell you something and I'm not going to do any different than the principles that I've practiced since my mother taught him to me and the one person that was born upon this earth that was perfect left a covenant with his organization when he left he says remember go love teach and do meaning you do it first then he said but remember there's one on the covenant that is to forgive thine enemies too many times as a neat I mentioned somebody in this organization including me we got a little bit ticked off at somebody we talked to a long time ago and we can't seem to come to the conclusion we're all selling our farm production in this country through the wrong type of system not meaning nfo but the fact that it doesn't any of them get us enough money now I'm not criticizing nfo cuz I'm sure they've enough people support it it would but now if I don't go out and boast about it brag about it or at least prove that it's doing about a job do you think those people are gonna come running to us can you imagine any insurance company even if they're gonna give you a piece of the rock I don't need any more rock either do you think they'd ever selling any if somebody didn't go out and boast about it now to prove things like this you look at Merrill Lynch benefits and Smith all I ever show on TVs a lot of bull but they keep it out there and they boast about it and they get people to come to them now I'll give you an example in the last two-and-a-half weeks leading up to Saturday before I came to this convention we went out one on one up and down the roads in Maine and we enrolled 22 new members that's one on one it's nothing to brag about it's just a fact that's all but you know what they keep telling us they'll say this I take a witness with me they'll say you guys are winning you don't even realize it you don't realize how much good you doing for us you probably think all of us are a bunch of high did you don't realize we have a hard time saying you're right you're winning we ought to be with your should have joined five years ago you see the 40 billion dollars that has been borrowed or more than 40 billion dollars that had been borrowed by the farmers and ranchers in this country the last two years they didn't borrow it put a new swimming pool I'll buy their sixth Cadillac car I'll take a trip to Miami or maybe some of them did but not many of them did and I didn't borrow all that forty billion dollars either so I'm not a failure there's a lot of other people they're in the same position I'm in but we're never going to get out of it until we're willing to go do that now just a couple other points I wanted to bring up you see when we go down the road you know it's really easy today all you ever used to have to promote was that three-year membership agreement and that was used against us something awful I'm not gonna sign up forever we find out and we sell this something it's one of our prime tool wheels look all we're asking you to do is come on with us for you and let's get the job done we feel that if you'd give it a try for a year and see what we have god what we have built today we find out we keep records on it over 90% of them we can get to join for one year when that time expires at the end of that year they will rejoin of their own free will you know something don't take many salesmen to sell that does it but you know something if we don't go do it it won't get done I'll give you another example if you don't think it's a psychological wall what would you say when the bike we have one county in me now we're not very big what about 90% is big in land mass as New York State is their third in the nation in milk production now if they've got that much milk production they've got a tremendous amount of cold dairy cows baby calves you know a few days to a week or so old some steers and some other things as well as some beef herds because there is quite a bit of green there we don't have that up our way but we do have meat we're a meat deficiency producing area but our price is consistently ten cents under the yellow sheet no matter what the Yoshi did you let me tell you something and you think about it one County up there has to Commission sales and 14 cattle buyers that buy usually a new truck every other year and they're out selling us their meat goes back to two slaughterhouses that we consistently be anywhere from 10 cents a pound to 23 cents a pound now why aren't those farmers enrolling all you have to do is look at the county that's all you have to do the organization in that County they never hold a County meeting unless we really get after the man that the man the head the chairman of the meat committee runs his own little store and if we try to move a load of meat he gets all the cattle together and runs him through his little slaughterhouse now I know what he's thinking you say why haven't you changed it we are but see we can outsell them if we'll only go do it that's all I got to say thank you