In an open letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak, Mark Legan, pork producer from Coatesville, Indiana, and chairman of NPPC's Competitive Markets Committee, has a suggestion for the Secretary. Legan writes: if you really want to entice people back to the rural lifestyle and increase competition in the livestock industry, scrap the Grain, Inspection and Packers and Stockyards Administration’s proposed rule and start over. Legan says the regulations – will result in government, not producers, deciding how livestock are bought and sold in this country.
Legan’s letter continues: – if the goal is to limit packer contracts, the new rules will certainly succeed. They will force hog farmers like me into the smaller ‘cash market,’ where risks can be greater. With fewer contracts, producers will find it more difficult to get financing. Some will simply not survive. That will eliminate desperately needed rural jobs and, once again, lead to decreased – not increased – competition in livestock farming. It will also drive up costs, leading to higher retail meat prices and fewer choices for consumers.
Legan said, – packers will likely pay just one price – almost certainly the lowest – to all producers, regardless of quality of their animals or any other special circumstances. This will not only lower prices, it will take away any incentive we have to innovate or produce higher quality animals. Legan emphasized: – there’s no way I could start out in farming today if these rules were in effect.
To read the rest of this story please go to: National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service
