Packers are…

November 7, 2011

Don’t answer that just yet!

A while back I was talking to Nebraska cattle feeder Terry Beller and he said, “Some of my very best friends are my packer buyers.”

Whoa. Even though I work with a lot of feedlots who embrace the cooperative, “everybody’s in this together” mentality, you don’t hear that from a feeder every day. (And Terry did admit that his dad would’ve had almost an opposite mentality when he ran the feedyard.)

But I think of that comment when I hear a group of naysayers cussing and discussing the packers’ role in the beef industry, which leads me today’s little white lie:

Myth–Packers are only interested in lining their pockets. They don’t care about beef quality or the greater state of the beef industry.

Fact–This business is made of individuals, so I can’t promise that there aren’t any packers that fit that mold. What I can tell you is that I’ve never met one of them. Several years ago I wrote a story called, “Common Ground” that highlighted the packers desire to work together with cattle producers.

Some of my favorite quotes:

• “I don’t mind paying a premium for good cattle.”—Art Wagner, National Beef Packing Co. LLC
• “I think the United States has extremely efficient, qualified ranchers, feedlots and processors. As a chain, however, we’re not terribly efficient. We’re not good at passing the right signals back and forth throughout the whole chain. The only way to do that is to have open-minded producers sit down and have conversations about how to work the supply chain to do what we all need: satisfy the consumer at a higher level.”—Ken Bull,Cargill
• “We like to buy what the consumer demands,”—John Gerber, Tyson

So that gives you a taste of the first time I really realized that the rotten packer that I’d always heard about wasn’t so rotten after all. Then I met some more folks who would talk about growing up in the business or helping out at the family’s operation on weekends. These guys weren’t out to get cow-calf producers or feeders—they came from the same stock.

Steve introduced me to National Beef’s CEO Steve Hunt in the article, “Premium Plans Pay.” And then we had a few packers speak at our Feeding Quality Forums. Last year Tim Schiefelbein gave a packer-buyers perspective, which I mentioned in a previous myth.

But this year was just an exclamation point on all those experiences when Cargill’s Glen Dolezal said, “We’re all in this together, and if we can ever get in the same spirit on the same page, working together, we’re going to put out a greater product and more of it to compete with other proteins or even the vegan diet. We have to be on the same page to promote beef and grow demand for it for every segment to be profitable into the future.”

Get the whole scoop from Glen in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zqLZuD3EHQ

I’m not saying you need to be best buds with every packer you meet, but just thought you should know where they’re coming from. It’s probably not as far from you as you thought.

May your bottom line be filled with Black Ink,

~Miranda

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