The committee to develop a cattle inventory control program to regulate the supply to packing plants and raise the price is still in the conception stage.
“While the details of the inventory management scheme aren’t in place yet, the fact that it’s being worked on and is going to be moved forward is important for people to know,” said Arno Doerksen, chair of the Alberta Beef Producers.
“We’re working hard to identify what the best approach is going to be. It’s not something we’re … used to doing and don’t like to do,” said Doerksen.
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Ed Miller of Highway 21 Feeders in Acme, one of the committee members trying to develop an inventory control plan, said discussions are still preliminary.
“At the moment nothing is concrete enough even to get discussed,” said Miller.
The committee has talked to the provincial and federal governments and packing plant representatives to come up with a solution to chronically low cattle prices.
“The obvious problem is we’ve got far more inventory to get slaughtered than we have capacity to slaughter it,” said Miller.
While there have been no time lines established, all the parties agree inventory control should be a national program and be implemented as soon as possible. The group has looked at how the program would fit in with the present farm income safety net and benefit all livestock producers.
“The process we have to go through and the program we have to come up with has to be beneficial to all segments of the industry right from the cow-calf to the feedlot sector,” he said.
Doerksen said developing an aid package for cattle producers is difficult both logistically and philosophically. Cattle producers have long advocated a free enterprise system with little government intervention. However, even the most strident producer believes some kind of government help is needed to deal with income loss and to control the volume of cattle going to the packers.
“Some kind of a set-aside is what’s going to be looked at, to reduce the available supply of cattle for slaughter, and spread them out through some period of time, and looking at measures to take them out of the system,” said Doerksen.
Financial aid will likely have to be part of the package to help cattle producers who are forced to feed their cattle longer in an effort to even out the supply.
While some producers believe Alberta’s two large American-owned packing plants are taking advantage of the closed border and dropping the price, Miller and Doerksen were careful not to blame the packers for the cattle industry problems.
“The packing plants are doing absolutely nothing wrong. They’re operating under a normal circumstance. They’re helping us out with killing as many days as they can,” said Miller.
“It’s not their job to rectify incorrect price. It’s our job to manage the inventory coming at them. As an industry we have to look after ourselves and manage the inventory so it becomes price responsive.”
