Cattle sale yields prices lower than farmers’ costs

Ken Johnston

While the number of head sold was up by more than 25% over last year, the prices farmers received for their yearlings were for the most part below their costs.
1,040 head were sold at the Stratton Sales Barn last Saturday with good yearlings getting between 85-87¢/lb and poor ones getting a lot lower than that. Last year the same good yearlings were netting about $1.17/lb.
Sale Manager Russell Richards said that even at 86¢/lb. “Farmers are working for less than nothing.”
With the BSE crisis now 16 months old, farmers are at their wits end. Many are losing money hand over fist. One producer who did not want to be identified said he lost $50,000 last year alone.
Richards said the government announcement on Friday to help the farmers out was the wrong type of help. “They are paying us to keep 8% of the herd at home and feed them. They should have dug a hole and buried that 8%.”
Over all the prices at the Stratton barn were comparable to Winnipeg and being that it is local there is less shrinkage and no shipping costs to sell the animals.
One buyer told Richards that he was in Manitoulin the day before and quality cattle there received about 5¢/lb. less than at Stratton.
Compared to two years ago, the same quality animals were getting around $1.30/lb. That was before the discovery of the lone animal in Canada with BSE.
Richards said the situation is bleak here, but is worse out west where many farmers do not have off the farm jobs like they do in the Rainy River District.
The Rainy River Cattlemen’s Association met with newly elected Thunder Bay/Rainy River Member of Parliament Ken Boshcoff, last night, to discuss the urgency of getting the BSE crisis resolved as well as getting an abattoir in the district.
The next sale for the district will be on October 2, 2004 at the annual Calf Sale at the Stratton Sales Barn.