Since 1978, packers have paid producers an estimated $200 million in direct grid premiums related to CAB acceptance, 95% of it in the last 5 years.
This interesting. If they paid out 95% of the premiums in the last 5 years, what did they pay out before that? How did they ever convince people to go along with this on such paltry payout for the previous 20+ years? I would guess that would be advertising, perhaps?
Brandon, not hacking on you as I enjoy your posts a lot. You seem like you have a lot of good things going on for you. Let's debate a little.
40 years ago, the top Angus breeders owned a group of short, fat, dinky, little toads with a lot of dwarf carriers. If they had stood behind those cattle they WOULD be a hobby breed today. Instead they got rid of the dwarves, sat down, brain stormed with feeders, packers, professors and wrote down what they wanted their cows too look like and they went out and did it (by any means necessary). I qualify that too be "out researched".
Well, they didn't get rid of the dwarves, did they? Herefords definately got rid of them better, but with more breeders being sacrificed. When you said "research" I thought you meant "researc" as in outside peer-reviewed stuff. They haven't done too much of that, really. No more than any other breed, and in fact, their proceedures were "in front" in the 70's, but are now lagging behind other breeds".
Angus was on the cutting edge of the creation of and adoption of EPDs, carcass EPDs, ultrasound, and ET and AI to the point that half of the Angus registered last year were AI and ET calves. Nobody adopts new techology faster and more widely spread within the breed than do the Angus crew.
You've got your history distorted. Simmental had the first Sire Summary. Angus was a leader in EPD in the '70's, but by the early 80's other breeds used far superior methods to adjust data and calcualte EPD. Hell, Hereford had the adjustments for WW in 1986 that AAA just got around to calculating and using in 2002! Simmental was doing in since 87, and every other major breed followed suit by 1991.
New technology faster? AAA COPIED the RAAA in the $EN EPD, waiting until RAAA did the footwork. RAAA and any number of the other breeds ran threshold models for CE, etc for nearly 10 years before AAA did.
RAA has been on total herd reporting for 11 or 12 years now. AAA still doesn't. BTW, it's really the only way to get good, fertility EPD, which the AAA still doesn't have.
Who else came up with the idea of branding their breed?? We could easily have Certified Charolais Beef in fine restaurants or Certified Texas Longhorn for that matter; but nobody else was willing to do the legwork and spend the money to create a brand name. Heck Hardees puts "Angus" in their tv commercials. McDonalds is experimenting with an Angus burger. I bet 90% of the public don't even know that Angus are Black. Angus clearly outworked everybody else in the cattle biz.
Well, they wurely did brand their breed more successfully than any others. But, the sad part is that it is the others that help them achieve the brand. But, that is just one aspect. I consider the "research" and "science" mentioned above to be "work", so I will give you the "brand", but AAA has clearly be outscienced and outresearched by other breeds. that's why I said this one is a question of perspective.
What continental or Brahman breed has done even a decent job over the last 15 years at taking market share??? Most other breeds (red Angus being a little bit of an exception) register far less animals than they did 15 years ago. Either the cattle ARE inferior (and that is arguably true of some breeds) or their breeders just have not done as good a job at getting out there and moving product as the Angus guys have done (probably the case with most breeds).
I don't consider shortterm marketshare or moving product to be the best indicator of longterm success. The other breeds have improved their breeds just as much or moreso in the things they needed to than Angus. All we need to do to see how easily folks can be duped is to honestly look at how little benefit there was to commercial producers for the first 20 years of the CAB program. They left money on the table for 20 years, but now it's OK since they actually get to make a little. You are intelligent enough to realize that these folks didn't have any way to track money left on the table, so they just see what looks good right now. They don't look back and wonder about the past. They ASSUME they were taken care of since they are doing OK now.
Badlands
