Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

Ever wonder how the government knows there are 12 million illegal immigrants here in the United States? If you don’t know who they are or where they are, how can you know how many immigrants are here?

I, who have a definite opinion about everything and am always willing to express it to anyone who will listen, am totally befuddled as to how we should proceed on immigration – an issue that means so much to our country and to our industry. Surely cooler heads and reasoned thinkers can find a solution that provides the workers we need in agriculture and the service industry without jeopardizing the nation’s economy and security. Anyone who has ever driven through El Paso, Texas on I-10 understands why this side of the border is a draw and a dream.

Speaking of “How do you handle it?” issues, the new farm bill debated is starting to get exciting since everybody thinks they have ownership. So far, each revision has less to do with farming.

We have come to expect some strange proposals from environmental groups, but one by a cattle group proposes that, by Jan. 1, 2008, large packers will have divested themselves of all but one of their facilities. I wonder who would step up and buy those facilities. If meatpacking is so profitable, why aren’t more companies charging headlong into the business? It seems to me we could end up with the same situation the ban on horse slaughter has created – a bunch of old cattle wandering around the country with all the unwanted horses that have no place to go.

The same group proposes that large packers (125,000 head harvested per year) be prohibited from owning cattle. Producer-owned cooperatives and one-plant operations would be exempt from the ban. While we’re at it, how about requiring they purchase cattle from feedlots with a fewer than 25,000-head capacity that only feed cattle from ranches with fewer than 500 cows and whose names start with “G”? Come on! For an industry that prides itself in being independent and self-reliant, you can’t unilaterally decide who’s good and who’s bad and then systematically try to put them out of business. That’s not who we are, or who I think we are.

Superior Livestock’s six-day Steamboat sale, which consigned 330,000 head, blows my mind. No wonder livestock auction markets are concerned about going out of business when there are that many cattle marketed outside their business. What really impressed me was that 75,000 of those cattle were source and age verified. Who knows how many were “natural,” Vac 45, etc. And some said we couldn’t change.

Speaking of change, a friend who is a great deal smarter than I, was looking at price charts the other day and observed that there is a pattern for both grain and beef prices that has nothing to do with demand. If you look back 100 years, grain stayed at the same level for about 30 years and then a world-shaking event shocked it to a new level. From 1908 to 1941 grain prices were flat, but the global effects of WWII caused it to jump 80 percent. The grain market then remained static until the 1973 grain embargo. Prices rose again and didn’t change until the recent ethanol impact took it to a new level.

Cattle prices have followed the same trend. The latest shock to the market – BSE – brought prices to $80-$90 without supply and demand showing that it should be there. Interesting, huh?