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of communications gap with nation’s cattlemen
Editor’s Note: The enclosed open letter to President
Carter from the Executive Vice-President of the
American Angus Association, is an expression of deep
concern on the part of the leadership of the largest beef
cattle registry association in the world, about the Ad
ministration’s handling of beef import legislation, and the
message administration actions are sending to cattle
producers. It is affecting the price of beef today, and will
have a continuing effect for a number of years, the Angus
Association says.
Dear President Carter
The message your Administration is sending to beef
cattle producers is being received loud and clear. Un
fortunately, I doubt the message they are receiving is the
message you think you are transmitting.
I represent 35,322 producers of Angus cattle who are
working to increase the production of high quality beef
cattle in this country. And they will, if they are allowed to
make reasonable profits on their investment, get a return
for their labor, and are confident that these reasonable
returns will continue for at least a few years. They need
this assurance in order to justify investing m long range
production expansion.
These American Angus Association members represent
more than 106,000 consumers. This is not a lot of people
compared to the total population, but agriculture
producers consume more products per capita than other
segments of the population because they buy goods for
production m addition to what they need for day to day
living. Cattle producers therefore are extremely con
scious of rising costs and the need to keep inflation under
control.
It for these reasons that I am concerned about the
communications gap between you and cattle producers. I
believe that you are trying to encourage beef producers to
expand production. But your actions and comments along
with those of Secretary Bergland are having the reverse
effect.
Livestock producers received no federal subsidy when
they were losing their shirts. Many producers in business
in 1974 went bankrupt. Others lost their life savings at
retirement age, with little chance of ever making it back.
Many of the producers that survived did so by increasing
Angus
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Association chief acuses Carter
their debt load and almost all survivors found otner
sources of income.
These losses incurred by livestock producers were a
subsidy to consumers who enjoyed beef from 1974 through
1977, priced below the cost of production. These low prices
helped keep the inflation index down, and made your
administration’s inflation fight look better than it
deserved in 1976 and 1977.
Beef prices in 1978 moved to profitable levels for the
first tune smce 1973. Instead of praising cattlemen for
helping keep inflation down in previous years and pointing
out to the public that the new higher prices were justified,
you and your administration spokesmen started to label
beef as an inflation leader. And this at a time when beef
prices still had not reached the level of a few years
earlier.
Administration efforts to expand production should
have started in 1976 when cattlemen were still losing
money. But nothing was done. The solution to the
problem, then as now, was to assure cattlemen that
profitable times were just around the corner and could be
counted on for some time to come. This would have helped
slow herd liquidation and brought about earlier ex
pansion.
To make matters worse, your efforts in 1978 and 1979 are
still not doing this. Expansion of beef imports by 200
million pounds m 1978 and an additional increase of 78
million pounds in 1979, has discouraged beef cattle ex
pansion. The same is true for your veto of the beef import
bill. These actions say to cattlemen that long term herd
expansion may not be profitable. It encourages them to
take profits now rather than to retain cows and heifers for
breeding and future expansion. To put it briefly your
actions have made cattlemen leery of the future.
Cattlemen, agricultural producers, and all consumers
are waiting for signs thal you are going to take a realistic
approach to slowing down or stopping inflation. As
president of the Umted States you are in the best position
to curb deficit spendmg’and bureaucratic inefficiency.
Putting the blame for much of our inflation on the beef
cattle industry will not even slow down inflation’s growth.
Worse, it will cause cattlemen to hold back on plans for
increased production, and will work against your cam-
spF-
1979 Eastern Sports Show,
nsburg, Pennsylvania Please
it the Harrisburg Sports Show
to see
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 20,1979
paign promises of reducing inflation to manageable levels
and balancing the federal budget in 1981.
According to a news release from the United States
Department of Agriculture, U.S. meat imports under the
Meat Import Act of 1964 will be maintained in 1979 at the
levels permitted during the last half of 1978. Assistant
Secretary of Agriculture Dale E. Hathaway said
President Carter had directed the agriculture and state
departments to negotiate agreements with meat ex
porting countries to limit total 1979 U.S. imports of fresh,
chilled and frozen beef, veal, mutton and goat meat to
1,570 million pound.
Hathaway said the decision is consistent with the
President’s statement to cattle producer representatives
July 25 that he would not permit unlimited beef imports m
1979.
The president acted after the Secretary of Agriculture
notified him that meat imports covered by the act
probably would exceed the law’s “trigger” level of 1,244.8
million pounds, Hathaway said.
Without voluntary restraint agreements, he said, it was
estimated meat imports would reach!,64o million pounds
during the coming year.
Under the law, Hathaway said, the President will in
voke the prescribed quotas and then suspend them.
The allowable import level during 1978 was 1,492 million
pounds, with a slight mcrease in actual shipments coming
in the last half of the year. Prorated on a monthly basis,
the new level will permit meat imports at the same level
as those of the past six months.
Potatoes set record
WASHINGTON, D.C. - seven eastern states totaled
U.S. potato stocks as of Jan. only 26.2 million cwt., down
1 continue to be at a record nine per cent from a year
high. At 190.4 million cwt., ago and the lowest in the
stocks in the fall producing Eastern region since 1974.
areas were seven per cent Stocks in the eight central
above a year earlier and states totaled 40.5 million
nine per cent above the Jan. cwt., up eight per cent from
1, 1977 total. That’s record a year ago, while the eight
high (for the date) for the western states had 124
third straight year and four million cwt. in storage, up 11
years in the past five. per cent from a year ago.
This, though stocks in the
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Sincerely,
C.K. Allen
Executive Vice-President
American Angus Association
125