Cattle Rack Rancher
Well-known member
At this point, it is one year and two days since that catfish farmer from Mississippi dragged that poor old angus BSE cow around to five slaughter plants up here in Canada before someone would kill it for him, and managed to get our borders closed to all our export markets. Since then we've heard alot of comments about 'Why did the Canadians allow themselves to get so dependent on the American market?' and ' Why don't the Canadians process their own beef?'. So, let me tell you the truth as I know it. In the seventies, we had five processing plants in Manitoba. That was back when the Canadian dollar was worth more than the American dollar. In the early eighties, The situation was reversed and we were paying $1.25 for every $1.00 US. Suddenly, we had hordes of US buyers coming up to our auction yards and buying our cattle. Because our packers had to pay $1.25 for every US dollar, they found that they couldn't compete and slowly they went down one by one. Now, we have no packers in Manitoba. That's how we became so dependent on the American market and that's why we don't process all of our own beef. The border gets closed and now we are just so screwed. There are plans to try to get one or two of these plants up and running again but I think the same thing is likely to happen when the border opens and the Americans show up at the auction yards again. If we couldn't compete when the US dollar was $1.25, how do we compete at US $1.35? The Americans have had their hands in this thing right from day one so you think they'd feel at least some responsibility and yet I hear that 83% of comments received by the USDA ask the border not be re-opened. All I want to know is what are we supposed to do? I've got all these cows that are worth about 10% of what I paid for them, if I sold, i'd still owe a pile of money on them and yet feeding them isn't profitable either. Some days I think I should just sell, take my lumps and move to Texas because I do like the way you boys down there think :cboy: