By John Hansen, OCM Director Howdy friends and neighbors, Happy Fourth of July. As is my custom, I send along the Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson to remind us of the historical significance family farmers played in the founding of our nation. Just as it is easy to not appreciate the importance of water to our very physical existence until the well goes dry, it is also easy to not appreciate the well that captures and produces Read More …
By John W. Boyd, Jr. and Mike Weaver This article first appeared in The Hill. Earlier this year, we planted our crops — soybeans, corn, and wheat — and began feeding our spring chickens. Farmers like us have been doing this for generations. But next year, when we turn to our spring tasks again, the entire farming economy will have shifted under our feet as a result of a merger wave currently underway among the world’s agricultural giants. They Read More …
OCM strongly opposes California’s Assembly Bill 243 (AB 243), authored by Assemblymember Jim Cooper. AB 243 vastly amends the current process in place to manage the state’s mandatory beef checkoff program in ways that weaken California cattle producers’ standing and subjects them to uncapped taxation — for many, potentially without representation. We have joined with a diverse group of stakeholders, to include the farming, environmental, animal welfare, and good food movement communities to oppose this measure. View our joint Read More …
By Lillian Salerno, former Deputy Undersecretary for Policy for Rural Development, USDA As one of the few rural entrepreneurs who served in the Obama Administration, I was so fortunate to get to spend much of my time with rural small businesses and local farmers implementing the programs Congress authorizes to assist in rural economic development. In this role for 5 years, I worked alongside USDA’s amazing State Directors and field staff implementing and supporting economic development in rural Read More …
By Vaughn Meyer with Angela Huffman In 1984, U.S. cattle producers voted to establish the Beef Checkoff Program as a means to promote their own product, U.S. beef. From the very beginning the beef checkoff was touted as a producer self-help program financed by all producers through a dollar per head assessment on every animal sold. From the very beginning cattle producers began questioning the underlying motive of their checkoff. It soon became apparent that importers, retailers and Read More …
By Fred Stokes Founding member, Organization for Competitive Markets In its recent propaganda piece being circulated in agriculture news outlets, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) tries to draw attention away from the growing outcry for checkoff program reform by making The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) a boogeyman. The truth is, farmers and ranchers want the corrupt, broken program reformed; more than 250,000 of them made their case to Congress earlier this week. Bipartisan legislation is Read More …
By Dudley Butler, former GIPSA administrator I was an active member of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) for many years. I quit NCBA because its leaders began to lie to its grassroots membership and I could not stomach it any longer. Today’s NCBA leaders continue this untruthful behavior. These leaders are like Judas goats leading their members to the slaughterhouse of vertical integration. The current lies being told by NCBA leaders involve the recent interim final rule Read More …
By Brenda Cochran My name is Brenda Cochran. My husband, Joe, who was born on a dairy farm in Baltimore County, Maryland, and I have been dairy farmers since 1975, raising our 14 children dairy farming in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Our family is still dairy farming today, in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, with increasing difficulty, under virtually unbearable pressures due to coercive and restrictive government policies that, among other burdens, limit the price we get paid for our cows’ Read More …