Word: cattleman
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Only in the past few months have they risen high enough for producers to consider seriously holding more cattle back from the market for breeding. Says Lauren Carlson, president of the National Cattlemen's Association: "We are at the critical point right now. Every cattleman is going to be making decisions in the coming weeks that will affect prices for a long time." The decision should be made easier because futures prices for cattle have jumped 50% in the past year and reached new records-a sign that prices will go higher in the months ahead. Thus it would...
...Once a cattleman chooses to keep rather than sell his heifers, the long, three-year breeding cycle begins. A heifer born this spring cannot be bred for another 15 months. This is followed by a nine-month gestation period. Since most producers like to breed their cows twice before sending them to market, this spring's newborn calf will not be ready for slaughter until early 1982. Only then are prices likely to ease. Says Alfred Kahn, the White House inflation adviser: "While ranchers are rebuilding their herds, prices will probably stay well above 1978 levels for the next...
Like almost all U.S. farmers, the cattleman is aggrieved. For four years the prices that he collects have buckled like a sick calf, while the costs of everything he buys-gasoline, fertilizer, tetracycline for ailing heifers, tractors from Peoria and bull semen from France-have climbed like corn in August. And just when he had started to make a comeback, a politically motivated peanut farmer from Georgia cut him off at the knees by letting in a lot of imports...
Urban shoppers, stunned as they are at beef prices climbing 4% in April alone and perhaps another 5% in May, should not lightly dismiss this plaint. To do so risks biting the hand that feeds. The U.S. cattleman is the descendant of the romantic cowboy, and for the most part he preserves those storied virtues of ruggedness, independence and dawn-to-dark hard work. But he is also a modern businessman, worried about cash flow and capital costs and, of course, interest rates. Says a typical cattle raiser in Oregon: "My family has been in this business for three generations...
...National Cattlemen's Association, flew to Washington to huddle with Robert Strauss, the celebrated Texas shooter of the bull. McDougal made this case to Carter's No. 1 inflation fighter: beef prices have gone up about as far as they will go. So, just let the cattleman alone, and he will build up his herds. But if more imports come in, the rancher may well reduce his herds still more-and prices, after a short dip, will climb through the early 1980s...