The Rural Voice, 1987-04, Page 24OPTIMISM
IN THE
BEEF
BUSINESS
Jim Wideman
is convinced that,
given efforts in the
right directions,
there's money to
be made in the beef
industry. As vice-
president and general
manager of the Ontario
Livestock Exchange,
he's in a position
to know.
by Mary -Lou Weiser -Hamilton
Jim Wideman is optimistic about
the future of the beef industry in On-
tario. He believes that there is room
for considerable expansion of cow/calf
herds, and that improved genetics will
benefit everyone in the beef industry.
As vice-president and general
manager of the Ontario Livestock
Exchange, Wideman is in close con-
tact with producers and buyers in all
sectors of the livestock industry —
396,000 head of livestock, including
cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats, are sold
yearly through the live auction at the
stockyards north of Waterloo. In ad-
dition, 86,000 head of beef cattle and
75,000 feeder and weaner pigs were
sold on a description basis through
weekly electronic auctions last year.
Wideman has a good grasp on what
buyers are looking for and what pro-
ducers should be producing to meet
those requirements. He says that
Ontario cow -calf herds could easily be
increased by 300,000 to 400,000 head.
He cites a decrease in shipments of
Western calves as part of the reason;
200,000 fewer calves, the equivalent
of 30 per cent of the market, came in-
to the province last year. As world
markets for Westem grain continue to
decrease, Western calves increasingly
remain in the West and are fed cheap
grain.
China, which has become self-
sufficient and is exporting grain, is
one example of a lost market. Wide-
man also points to the theory that
Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev is
more a pragmatist than an ideologist.
"He's more interested in putting
food on the table than in holding the
line on communist ideology. We'd
better pray for communism if we
want to continue to export grain,
because if they deviate from the true
communist principle of socialism
and start putting in the profit mode,
they're going to become self-sufficient.
If we lose Russia as a customer for
grain, Western grain is going to drop
in price more yet."
Wideman recognizes that the cow/
calf industry was once considered se-
condary to the feedlot industry, but he
believes that this perception is chang-
ing. "The truth of the matter is that
cow/calf men are the leaders or will
have to become leaders because they
are the source of our product. The
cow/calf people have to provide the
genetics and that takes a great deal
more expertise."
There is a need for improved gen-
etics, Wideman adds. About 20 per
cent of beef carcasses in Canadian
packing -house coolers are off -grades
or off -weights. They are what
Wideman refers to as fallouts. "They
fall outside of what packers will pay a
premium for. They're either too light
or too heavy, too fat or too thin." He
would like to see the margin of fallout
reduced to two to three per cent. And
it's the responsibility of cow -calf oper-
ators to produce genetically superior
calves which will eventually convert
to more money for the producer and for
the feedlot operator, he says.
22 THE RURAL VOICE