The Stalwart

How The Election Will Affect Beef And Ranching

With beef trading near major highs, you might be wondering how the upcoming election will affect the market. Fear not! Beef Magazine examines the difference between Obama and McCain as seen through the eyes of a cattle rancher.

And this is something I didn't know:

As we’ve discussed in earlier articles, redistricting, along with consolidation in ag, have led to a situation where rural America and ag have lost significant political clout. That dilution has been even more dramatic for livestock production, which is more geographically diverse than farming in general. Thus, we’ll likely have to look to aligning strategically with other farm sectors.

Organic Food Economics

Remember when Wal-Mart made a big splash by announcing its entrance into the organic food space? Not long after, it got a lot of attention for admitting, basically, that its efforts weren't going well. How did Wal-Mart miscalculate? Isn't everyone from all walks of life getting organic fever?

Maybe not. A Kansas State researcher has done some work on the economics of organic foods, and this part caught my eye:

What's more, Wileman said, is that research done at K-State shows that beef producers are competing for a mere 2 percent of a consumer's income. He said another thing to keep in mind is research showing that most growth in organic and natural food items has come from the same shoppers buying more products, not from an increase in the numbers of like-minded consumers.

Buyers of organic food have always bought a mix of conventional and organically grown items. This suggests that organic foods haven't crossed the chasm, but rather that narrow population just keeps substituting a greater percentage of their conventional food with organic. Even at organic food's rate of growth -- which is apparently quite high -- traction among the Wal-Mart set could be next to nil.

So, Do You Bet Against The Farmers?

Reports of farmers trading in their cheap cattle for valuable corn raises the obvious question: is it time to buy cattle and give up on corn? Well for one thing, it's always dicey to bet against insiders, especially when the source of your info is CBC.ca, and the insiders are, well, the actual farmers.

But it is true that farmers, by doing this, will create a greater supply of grain and a lower supply of value-added cattle. That has to show up in prices, especially since cattle are such a big consumer of grain.

Another thing to consider -- and I almost hate to say it, but I will -- is that farmers, in the end, always get the short end of the stick. It seems to be a metaphysical constant, that in the long run, the poor farmer gets, for lack of a better word, screwed. So when you see this farmers trading in their heads of cattle for plowshares, in a rush to go for the fast cash, you can almost see how it all plays out in the end. They make their investment and the price of corn crashes to the earth. They have to sell the farm, either to a big agribusiness, or to land developers that turn the land into condos for Prius-driving yuppies. That's just how it goes.

A Farmer's Pair Trade

Short beef; Long grain.

Something about this doesn't seem particularly sustainable to me, given that livestock represents such a major source of grain consumption. But in the meantime, farmers are going for the (fields of) gold.

CBC.ca:

Financially beleaguered cattle producers in Manitoba are selling off their herds and switching to wheat, capitalizing on soaring grain prices.

Martin Unrau, president of the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association, is just one of hundreds of ranchers expected to sell off their animals this year and put their fields to work raising grain.

(via Thoughts From The Middle Of Nowhere)

Michael Pollan on the Farm Bill

From today's NYT Sunday Magazine:

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system.

Michael Pollan (author of the widely praised The Omnivore's Dilemma) starts out promisingly enough in making the connection between the Farm Bill and the bulging waste line of so many Americans.   It's a surprisingly solid, free market argument in the Times.   So you'd think that his conclusion would be to, you know, scrap the damn bill:

The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won’t solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies. It will take some imaginative policy making to figure out how to encourage farmers to focus on taking care of the land rather than all-out production, on growing real food for eaters rather than industrial raw materials for food processors and on rebuilding local food economies, which the current farm bill hobbles. But the guiding principle behind an eater’s farm bill could not be more straightforward: it’s one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity.

Such changes are radical only by the standards of past farm bills, which have faithfully reflected the priorities of the agribusiness interests that wrote them. One of these years, the eaters of America are going to demand a place at the table, and we will have the political debate over food policy we need and deserve. This could prove to be that year: the year when the farm bill became a food bill, and the eaters at last had their say.

Ah nevermind.  The solution to bad legislation is just more legislation.  He didn't actually say it, but I think I faintly heard the phrase "eater's bill of rights" somewhere in there.