Western ranchers met with Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman to urge him to adopt antimonopoly reforms for the beef industry. Secretary Glickman told representatives of the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) that he would not reject an antimonopoly proposal the group proposed to him last year, as Department of Agriculture staff had recommended.
Instead, Secretary Glickman directed his staff to reconsider whether the economic and legal evidence supports adopting the proposal. WORC told the Secretary the proposal would level the playing field between family farmers and the beef packing companies which buy their cattle.
"We were encouraged in the meeting that the Secretary wants to give a fair hearing to the solutions that grass roots producers have proposed to deal with monopolization of our cattle markets," said Jerry Sikorski, Chair of the Northern Plains Resource Council (NPRC) and one of the groups' representatives in the meeting with Secretary Glickman. "Now we're encouraging him to show strong leadership and protect ranchers and farmers from the predatory practices of the big packing companies by adopting these anti- monopoly reforms."
"Our rural communities are suffering from ruinous prices for agricultural commodities, especially cattle," Sikorski continued. "We believe the anticompetitive practices addressed by our proposal cost U.S. producers at least $2 billion dollars per year, and perhaps two or three times that much," Sikorski said. "If Secretary Glickman takes the lead in challenging these unfair, anticompetitive practices head on, he will be a hero in the countryside," Sikorski said.
"People in grassroots agriculture support this rule. We encourage them to call or write the Secretary and go to the meetings he will hold around the country in the next couple of weeks," said Skip Waters, a Wyoming rancher who represented the Powder River Basin Resource Council in the meeting with Secretary Glickman. "Ask him to get out in front and adopt the market reforms proposed by WORC. Those reforms will alleviate the crisis situation facing livestock producers brought about by these abusive practices," Waters said.
"Talk to your Congressmen and Senators during the upcoming Congressional recess," Waters advised farmers and ranchers. "Urge them to support adopting these reforms and support USDA's additional budget requests needed to address this situation."
Secretary Glickman's consideration of the WORC proposal is in addition to the steps he announced after a meeting with several Senators from Midwestern states on Tuesday.
WORC filed a "Petition for Rulemaking" with Secretary Glickman in October, 1996, asking that USDA use its authority under the Packers and Stockyards Act to limit the use of so-called "captive supplies" of cattle by beef packers. Many farmers and ranchers say that beef packers' use of "captive supplies" limits open competition and lowers the price they get for their cattle — without lowering the price of beef to consumers. WORC's proposal summarized economic evidence showing that captive supplies do lower cattle prices. Secretary Glickman published the WORC proposal for comment early in 1997. More than 1,700 comments were submitted, and they favored adoption of the proposal by a ratio of 33 to 1.
The minority report of Secretary Glickman's Advisory Committee on Agricultural Concentration endorsed WORC's proposal, and the majority report concluded that his authority to adopt such measures under existing law was clear. Most recently, the National Commission on Small Farms unanimously recommended adoption of the proposal in January, 1998.
Organizations supporting adoption of the rules proposed by WORC represent hundreds of thousands of producers and consumers. They include the National Farmers' Union, National Farmers Organization, American Corn Growers Association, National Contract Poultry Growers' Association, New England Milk Producers Association, Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment, Farm Aid, Western Livestock Digest, Center for Rural Affairs, National Family Farm Coalition, U.S. Catholic Conference, United Methodist Church, and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture.
WORC's petition for rulemaking asks the Secretary of Agriculture to adopt rules to:
(1) Prohibit packers from procuring cattle for slaughter through the use of a forward contract, unless the contract contains a firm base price that can be equated to a fixed dollar amount on the day the contract is signed, and the forward contract is offered for bid in an open, public manner.
(2) Prohibit packers from owning and feeding cattle, unless the cattle they feed or own are sold for slaughter in an open, public market.
Those who want a copy of the petition for rulemaking or background information can contact the Western Organization of Resource Councils at 2401 Montana Avenue, #301, Billings, Montana 59101; phone, (406) 252-9672. You can also get information on the group's web page, at www.worc.org, or send an e-mail message to WORC at billings.worc.org.
The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) is an association of grassroots organizations: the Dakota Resource Council (North Dakota), Dakota Rural Action (South Dakota), the Idaho Rural Council (Idaho), the Northern Plains Resource Council (Montana), the Powder River Basin Resource Council (Wyoming) and the Western Colorado Congress (Colorado). The members of these groups are farmers, ranchers, small business and working people who seek to protect natural resources, family farms, and rural communities.
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