Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

Walt Olson heaved a sigh of relief as he talked about the severe weather that had just skirted his feedyard. The wicked winter storm put the rest of Oklahoma in a state of disaster, but Tri State Feeders was high and dry … again. The earlier New Year’s storm with its icy rage also missed the yard, although for the first time in Olson’s 17-year tenure, they lost power for several days. Olson sent his family on down to the Dallas Cowboys football game and he and his crew moved quickly to their emergency ration of whole corn and chopped hay. Their generator ran the two wells and enabled them to keep water and feed in front of cattle.

“We saw helicopters flying west, delivering hay to stranded cattle herds,” Olson said. “I don’t think they know just how many got in trouble out there.”

The only difficulty for Olson was when some of their outside cattle got through a downed electric fence. Twelve head wandered onto the tracks and were hit by a train.

A real “old timer”
For such a tender age, Olson has a long history in the cattle-feeding industry. His dad, Lloyd, went to work for Paul Engler at Hereford Feedyard in 1963. Olson remembers, as a kid of nine or ten, helping his dad load cattle at all times of the day and night. In those days, cattle went to 14 or 15 packers in the Midwest, and Olson remembers the thinking back then: “If you didn’t like one buyer there was always another.” The world has changed and Olson has changed with it.

Olson’s Tri-State Feeders, at 30,000-head capacity, is situated 20 miles from National and 100 miles from the other Big Three processors.

Olson has carved out his own niche in the industry. “As a small, independent feeder, I stay out of the big boys’ way. We take cattle that they don’t want to mess with – cattle that take a little more tender loving care.”

Many of his cattle come from Capital Land and Livestock. “We buy a lot of 600-pound cutting bulls from Capital. I like the fact that they can put together large numbers and still keep them fresh.”

Tri State castrates incoming bulls and feeds them to 1,225 to 1,300 pounds. About one-third of the cattle on the lot are company owned.

The company also runs an outside cattle program with 600 to 1,000 head out at different times. Olson’s little corner of the Oklahoma Panhandle presents some problems. As he puts it, “This country promises a lot and delivers very little.”

They have had to widen their circle for placing outside cattle since most the farmland in the area is basically dryland and very unforgiving. “We get our corn and hay from southwest Kansas and are too far away from irrigated ground to put up silage.”

The big picture
Olson is not sure that the market has quite grasped the impact of recent storms across the High Plains, but does know that a lot of light cattle went on feed and will be coming out in the next months. He wonders if some will end up being delivered on futures contracts, which has not happened in the last few years.

The jury is still out for Olson on the ethanol byproducts question. A plant is under construction just 20 miles away near Liberal, Kan., and would be a possible supplier for Tri State if the price makes sense. Olson is very concerned with the current high price of corn and the fact that, even with all of the projected ethanol plants, only seven percent of the nation’s energy will be met. “They [new ethanol plants] certainly will not lighten the load on foreign oil,” he commented.

Olson believes that with high corn prices, lowering tariffs on ethanol from Brazil might make more sense, but agrees that dependence on South American governments might be just as chancy as depending on the Middle East.

Tri State’s work force has been reasonably stable, although they did lose some employees to the oil patch where wages are hard to compete with. As for the immigration issue, Olson remembers his economy professor telling the class that when unemployment gets down to five percent or less, help would be needed because five percent of the population is unemployable.

But none of that matters if we can’t sell beef to the rest of the world. Opening borders closed to trade is high priority, according to Olson.

“We have an exceptional beef product,” Olson said. “With the exception of Canada, we produce the only high quality beef in the world. We need free market access for the beef industry to continue to grow, and we need all of those barriers gone.”