Cresrud--Tysons New Partner

[Cattleman]

I thought I would add my 2 cents. To be honest I haven't had a chance to read the site, but from Cowman's numbers in terms of size. It sounds like Australia, maybe you should check out the Australian Agriculture corporation's website. I worked for them for a bit, spent some time on a couple stations. The one manager said I should go check out some of the big stations, (his was only a million acres, although it wasn't as intense because there were only 25,000 head on the million acres. I know when I was there 5 years ago, they wanted to own half a million head of cattle out on the stations. These are big outfits, with a very good marketing plan in place. They have existed for a while, and will continue to be the way more and more production is done. I am not saying not to worry about these developments, or to be scared of them, but as Farmers son has said, we should focus on our own business, and find the best way for you to be successful in the future under the new systems of agricultural production and marketing that are/will exist.

[kato]

It would be interesting to know the exact history of a typical million acre ranch in Argentina. I would think it likely that in the past, the same million acres raised the same number of cattle, with the difference being the number of owners of those cattle. It's not like new land was made to form such a ranch.

Is this our future? All of us being ranch hands for the corporation that buys Saskatchewan? Or the one that owns Manitoba or Alberta? I would like to think not.

[Cattleman]

Well Kato, who knows what will happen to each of us, but if you are not willing to change and move with the times, your time will limited compared to someone who is progressive and willing to seek opportunities how ever they come.
On that note, I had a friend who was a small family operation.....400,000 acres. Now the areas may seem a bit difficult to understand, but in terms of investment, they were complaining about high land values, at $40/Acre!! Out in the outback, and I think they had around 12,000 head of cattle. They also had one little tractor and a couple of trucks, so there are farm operations with more investment than these.

[Cattleman]

Sorry for the terrible writing skills I am displaying....need to slow down a little!! Hopefully the point came across that there are family operations still operating along side the large operations, but it takes good management to stay in the game.
The interesting comparison I liked to think about is the investment, and return on investment in these large scale operations who are our competitors. There are quite a lot of different systems in the world that produce beef, but the return on investment is the driver, and has to be measured as you move forward.