Riding Herd
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
by LEE PITTS
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Leather’s New Look
Slow Moving Traffic
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September 15, 2018 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 60 • No. 9
BY LEE PITTS
he earliest childhood memory I have is being scared out of my four-year-old mind by a grotesque dead fox, complete with head, that my great-grandmother wore around her neck on special occasions. By the time we got around to settling her estate that poor animal finally got the proper burial it deserved because fox stoles had gone completely out of fashion. Another of the oldest memories I have is of my grandpa having to buy a full length mink coat for my grandma instead of buying something we really needed... like a new fishing boat. By the time my grandma died the only ones who wanted that mink stole were the moths in her closet. Currently there are at least 29 new companies and billions of dollars betting that real leather from real animals will soon go the way of grandma’s mink stole. And that’s not just a problem for folks who make wingtip shoes, bomber jackets or leather handbags, it’s a BIG problem for ranchers too because a significant part of their paycheck is based on the leather hide that beefsteaks and top sirloins come wrapped in.
The Drop
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
The value of a steer, heifer or cow hanging on the rail is determined by two things, the value of the beef cuts and the value
Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction. of the non-meat items. We refer to these byproducts of the beef business as the “drop” and it includes 23 non-meat items like bones for bonemeal, cheek meat, liver, tallow, tongue and most importantly, the hide. The hide typically makes up over half the value of the drop. A leatherworker or saddlemaker typically buys two types of beef hide: chrome tanned which comprises the flashy colorful leather on the chaps rodeo queens wear, and veg tanned, which is the tooled leather at the top of the chaps that comprise the belt. Chrome tanned
leather is so named because the hide is tanned with a chromium chemical mixture, whereas veg tanned sits in vats of liquors comprised of vegetable tannins derived from oak trees, for example. Only veg tanned leather can be tooled in typical cowboy style. Chrome tanned leather is typically sold in whole hides 40+ square feet in size and is mechanically “split” to a uniform thickness. One of the problems with leather is the hide is not of uniform thickness thoughout the hide. The leather most cowboys are familiar with is veg
tanned leather. A rancher’s saddle and belt are always made from this veg tanned leather. Saddlemakers and leatherworkers normally buy their leather by the side, there being two sides to a complete hide. Saddlemakers can also buy their hides in a roll of 5 sides. A hobbyist usually buys shoulders, double shoulders, bellies, butts, by the inch, or by the kit from Tandy Leather. Whereas a hobbyist might be paying as low as $129 per side right now for foreign leather that has brand and insect marks, a good saddlemaker might easily pay double that for something like Hermann Oak Leather, Thoroughbred or Wickett and Craig, which are all premium brands. A saddlemaker can easily use up to 3-4 sides of leather to construct one saddle. At the packer level the wet hides are all given strange names like natives, Laredos, Coloradoes, butt brands, plump cows, Holsteins, bulls and Heavy/Texcontinued on page two
Questionable Funding For Environmental Groups & What They Do With It BY JACK DINI / CANADAFREEPRESS.COM
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any corporations provide funding to environmental groups and the level of funding has been growing. As Steve Goreham says, “We’re talking big dollars here. Corporate funding of environmental groups amounts to hundreds of million of dollars per year. In 2007, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Coca-Cola announced a multi-year partnership worth over $20 million to WWF. Home improvement retailer Lowe’s contributes more than $1 million each year to The Nature Conservancy for conservation projects in North America. In 2013, Wells Fargo bank provided $21.8 million in grants to nearly 500 environmental nonprofits. The Nature Conservancy received millions in contributions from oil giant BP. Boeing, Chevron, Clorox, ExxonMobil, Monsanto, Shell, Starbucks, and Walmart are just a few of the global corporations partnering with environmental groups. Saving the world has become big business for environmental NGOs, courtesy of contributions from corporate partners.” 1 In addition to the money NRDC wields to influence elections and energy policy
Greenpeace, the largest environmental organization in the world, will take in more than $10 million this year to support its US operations. The group has an organizational membership of more than 3 million and offices in more than 40 countries. This is the organization lobbying against every form of energy except wind and solar. They oppose GMOs. In fact, they are perhaps the world’s leading opponent to of ‘golden rice,’ the genetically engineered miracle food that can prevent debilitating deficiencies in millions of children worldwide. The have led the global campaign against the pesticide DDT. Hundreds of thousands now contract the malaria DDT could prevent. 2 The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is one of the largest and most well-funded environmental groups in the United States. In 2013, NRDC had $268.1 million in financial assets and $116 million in income. The NRDC Action Fund brought in $1.7 million in revenue to support its lobbying efforts in 2013. Between 1998 and 2013, NRDC and its affiliates spent $9.5 million on lobbying and $1.6 million supporting political candidates. 3 continued on page four
f all the cars in the world were placed end to end... they’d probably be behind a slow moving cattle truck. Everyone is in such a hurry these days they don’t have time to waste behind a Gooseneck filled with cattle. So they pass with no visibility or lay on their horns, as if that’s going to speed things up. They’ll risk their lives hurrying themselves to death so that they can get to their final destination earlier. And when I say “final” I mean final! I prefer a less hurried pace. I hate life in the fast lane with everyone crowding, shoving, pushing and running over each other. We live in a fast paced world where we brag about the speed of our Internet service and agonize over which would be faster, the escalator or the elevator? Everyone is so stressed out and in such a hurry that I heard of one housewife who quickly loaded her dirty plates and dishes in the microwave before rushing out the door only to discover upon her return that a microwave is not a dishwasher. We have a frenetic friend who loaded her three month old baby in the baby carrier and then went off and left it and the baby sitting on the kitchen table. I’ll never forget my first ranch job out of college when the owner wanted me to take the bobtail cattle truck and bring back a load of feed from the mill. No problem, I’m the son of a long-haul trucker and I know my way around a set of gears. But I was surprised he trusted me that much and that he didn’t want to tag along, but I quickly discovered the reason when I tried to navigate the two lane road around windy curves with steep grades and descents. I was soon being followed by a long line of cars and everyone had one hand on their horn. The average driver will honk a horn 15,250 times in their life and many of the drivers behind me that day
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