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Ending of an eraBy Trent Loos Labeling it the "Ending of an Era," on April 11, the final livestock sale will be held at the South Saint Paul Stockyards in Minnesota. No one in agriculture, whether in livestock production or otherwise, can hear about this without feeling some level of regret. Originally built in 1886, the stockyards once covered 260 acres and today consists of a mere 27. Farmers who now use the facility must deal with suburban America in order to make their way to the market destination. You can understand why it makes sense to close such a historic part of American livestock history from a logistical standpoint. I hope the same thing doesn't happen in St. Paul that has happened in Chicago. When I go to Chicago, I will frequently engage in conversations with folks who tell me Chicago has no interest in agriculture. The funny thing is that every Chicagoan seems to have a great deal of pride in food, yet they fail to recognize that food comes from agriculture. The Chicago experience seems to burn me a little more than other city dwellers' ignorance about food production; mainly because, had it not been for livestock, Chicago would not be what it is today. There is a great photo of the old Chicago stockyards-475 acres filled with cattle, hogs and sheep with the "city" of Chicago in plain sight in the background. I wish I could personally show every resident of that city where the roots of their great metropolis began, firmly entrenched in the livestock industry. In 1900, 82 percent of all meat consumed in the United States came through the Chicago stockyards and meat packing district. It is extremely interesting to note that, through that era, the issues of the day were immigration and packer control. You see, the five large packers controlled all the meat production in the nation at that time. Even South Saint Paul Stockyards felt the impact of the Chicago meat packing power. In 1897, Swift purchased the packinghouse at the South Saint Paul Stockyards and acquired half of the stockyards. So it doesn't take much investigative work to uncover that the business of converting a live animal into human consumable products has never been accomplished on a large scale by many different entities. In fact, it was the ownership of the same companies that we know of today that led to the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. Yes, the names of the people who have owned those companies have changed much like a revolving door since the Swift, the Armour and the Morris families first sold the businesses. I am a cattleman. The ideal day for me is spent horseback, working cattle alongside my family members. I truly love the idea of managing the cow and assisting her in the conversion of cellulose material into the essentials of human life. I enjoy providing proper animal care and identifying genetics that will consistently produce a higher quality beef product that the global consumer is willing to pay a premium for, because they need it and like it. But the sad fact is that, no matter how much I love the ranching aspect of the beef business, someone must always be involved in profitably taking the live animal and generating products that the consumer demands. History tells us that very few have been able to do that successfully for any length of time at all. All of that leads me into the discussion of the day about a Brazilian company potentially becoming the largest meatpacking entity, not only in the United States but also in the world. Not for one minute do I like the thought of a foreign interest controlling the lion's share of the U.S. meat producing business. You have all of the reasons why it is good and why it is bad; but none of us who prefer to ride the range in the Sandhills of Nebraska and tend to the cows can continue to do so if somebody doesn't successfully operate the packing part of the equation. Maybe one day all 303 million Americans will wake up and pay a little more attention to the origin of their food. Until that happens, it is up to each one of us to figure how to find a way to be a part of the equation rather than just another chapter in the book "The Ending of an Era." Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com. 3/31/08 Date: 3/27/08
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