Brian 99 - I reposted this as I think it is an interesting question. A couple of thoughts from our
personal operation.
We would likely be smaller than we are today and/or where we are headed.
We would likely be more traditional.
We would likely have a much higher cost structure.
We would likely be closer in action to "doing what we always did."
I suspect that there would have been some contraction in the industry with the runup in the dollar
and the aging of the cow/calf guy. I think I would have more small operations and hobby operations
to compete with and I suspect that the consolidation further up the chain would have continued, and
we would today be at or close to the place that BSE accelerated us to more quickly. There may have
been slightly less grass turned into cropland, but I think the trend would still have been there,
since it is still tough to generate the kind of cash flow that cropping can provide.
I think our industry (which is not very nimble) would be even less so without BSE.
There are always 2 ways to look at any event, and I am not convinced all of the fallout from BSE was
bad, even though some of it was handled poorly.
personal operation.
We would likely be smaller than we are today and/or where we are headed.
We would likely be more traditional.
We would likely have a much higher cost structure.
We would likely be closer in action to "doing what we always did."
I suspect that there would have been some contraction in the industry with the runup in the dollar
and the aging of the cow/calf guy. I think I would have more small operations and hobby operations
to compete with and I suspect that the consolidation further up the chain would have continued, and
we would today be at or close to the place that BSE accelerated us to more quickly. There may have
been slightly less grass turned into cropland, but I think the trend would still have been there,
since it is still tough to generate the kind of cash flow that cropping can provide.
I think our industry (which is not very nimble) would be even less so without BSE.
There are always 2 ways to look at any event, and I am not convinced all of the fallout from BSE was
bad, even though some of it was handled poorly.