a-b-p

[ALLFARMER]

i to have very little interest going
to these fall meeting!
most the benefit goes to the cow caif
man.and pay the least of money in to the outfit!
the feedlot sector pays the most every time comes the compulsery check offand no real return done nothing for lakeside
srike!!
small feedlot off 5000 head pays about12000 dollar/year can,t see no return.

[blackjack]

...jerryk...you do bring up a interesting opinion on the feeders paying the most dollars to the checkoff...a cowcalf man would maybe say since the feeder has the decision when buying the calf that they might have purchased the calves three dollars less...personally i find it a waste of time pitting producers as ourselves against each other...why don't we just admit...when calves were cheap...you guys made the money...now that things have reversed the cowcalf is making some and now your part of the industry will suck... do we stay as an industry the way we are now and suck each other dry while the return on our investments shrinks while reading how ag business at the other end make record profits... i guess the part of the abp that bothers me is that it acts like big brother...i read grassroot producers wanting change...for example testing the cows for bse for marketing purposes...but they tell us no cause...well how does the industry really know if we don't try...jerryk...you say the cowcalf man gets all the benefit of the checkoff...is the age verification really going to help you or i or is just another little smoke and mirror...the grassroot producers has asked for more slaughter capacity for the last two years...i could be wrong but the producers i talk to invisioned a different view of how the added capacity would have hoped to been taken place...in my opinion the capacity has maybe increased but has it really helped you or i... maybe some of the delegates that read these posts can answer some of us producers concerns... maybe we can get some points views from both the cowcalf and feeder sectors...hey maybe there is even a packer guy or gal out there that could enlighten us...

[cowman]

Well I would suggest that the cow calf man pays just as much as the feeder? We all pay the checkoff? Now if you want to own 5000 cattle that is your right, but don't forget someone else already paid the checkoff on those 5000 head of calves?
In addition the cow/calf sector gets the honor of putting ID tags in every calf...at his own expense and labor...so the rest of the industry can benifit from traceback?
Back in the early nineties every producer got to vote on keeping a mandatory checkoff? Slightly more than 6% of producers voted to keep the checkoff...were you one of them? Or did you vote to get rid of the checkoff? Or did you even bother to vote...only 12% of eligible producers bothered?
Whether we like it or not the ABP is our voice in Ottawa. I guess we should be at least trying to elect people who will do something? For the first time I intend to attend an ABP meeting in my area and see what the candidates have to say! Maybe that is a waste of time but if we don't get some new blood in there then who have we got to blame if we don't like how they operate?