Mike Callicrate, OCM Vice President, Presentation Part 1 of 2 at the Colorado Independent CattleGrowers Association’s 7th Annual Convention held 2012 July 13th — 15th in Lasalle, CO. View All Presentations Also presenting: Bill Bullard, R-CALF USA CEO David Wright, ICON President & Beef Board Member of Nebraska
Author: Mike Callicrate
Litigation, Our Best Hope
At the 2009 OCM Annual Conference in St. Louis, Philip J. Weiser, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) announced an unprecedented governmental initiative to bring competition and fair play to agricultural markets. For the first time in history, there was to be a joint and coordinated effort by USDOJ and U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to enforce antitrust laws and restore competition and fairness to the agricultural marketplace. Weiser announced plans for Read More …
Letter From Langdon: The Farm Bill Stew
By Richard Oswald The Farm Bill is a stew. The one ingredient it doesn’t contain now is some method that would keep farmers from overproduction. That would maintain independent farmers without costing taxpayers. The way to help farmers is to make sure that supplies of grain don’t depress prices. But that’s not in the ‘stew’ now being cooked up in the Farm Bill. Some people say the Farm Bill is pork for farmers. I say it’s really stew, Read More …
Speak Your Piece: Preserving the People’s Universities
By C. Robert Taylor I write this article not out of dissatisfaction with my life as a professor, but because I think the Land Grant universities are drifting away from their mission of providing help and education for common people like my family and me. These are the nation’s Land Grant universities — the Peoples’ Universities. The stalemate (in the Land-Grant System is) due to mindset, uncertain mission, ineffectual leadership and inappropriate organization. — Dr. James Meyer, Chancellor Read More …
Court Supports Action against International Fertilizer Cartel
June 28, 2012 For Immediate Release Contact: Fred Stokes 601-527-2459 tfredstokes@hughes.net www.competitivemarkets.com Lincoln, NE: In a decision that will rock global agriculture supply markets for years, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled June 27th that a civil suit alleging price fixing in American potash markets by a handful of global fertilizer suppliers can proceed and be heard in the Seventh Circuit. “This a huge step forward for American farmers and competitive markets,” noted Mike Callicrate, vice Read More …
OCM Applauds Amendment to Make Checkoff Programs Voluntary
Lincoln, NE, June 18, 2012: The Organization for Competitive Markets expressed its full support for an amendment to the 2012 Farm Bill that would make all mandatory checkoff programs voluntary. The amendment, proposed by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), reads: “No program to promote and provide research and information for a particular agricultural commodity without reference to specific producers or brands (commonly known as a ‘check-off program’) shall be mandatory or compulsory.” These checkoff programs, funded by assessments of Read More …
We almost had it all
By Richard Oswald The old rule of thumb is that farmers live like paupers only to die as millionaires when heirs receive their estate. That’s because land grows in value over time, but the return it gives owners, modest, slow appreciation, is traditionally only about 5% per year. Its a long story why, but because they owed money on their farm my parents were a little poorer in the early sixties than typical farmers their age. Corn prices Read More …
USDA’s unused case to push its own rule
By Alan Guebert In a striking, two-and-a-half page analysis that ran counter to department leanings, the chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture strongly objected to the department’s use of two outside studies that justified the massive retooling—essentially gutting—of the 2010 update of Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rules to ensure fairness in livestock and poultry markets. The memo was one needle in a nearly 1,700-page haystack USDA forked over in reply to Freedom of Read More …