Sort & Cull

I don't know about you, but there's something unnerving about being described as "experienced."

Maybe I should just relax and accept it as a genuine compliment, a heartfelt tribute to my long and valued service in the trenches. That would probably be the most gracious attitude to take.

Yet to paraphrase Saint Paul, it takes a sinner to know a sinner. They may say "experienced," but what I hear is "known to make the same mistake more than once."

Now before you get too smug, I can't be the only "experienced" veteran in the room. Farmers and ranchers are famous for their bumper crops of experience.

For example, the soaring cost of feeder cattle since Memorial Day (i.e., the cash index has jumped nearly $13 over the last eight weeks) and the related surge in projected feedlot breakevens (i.e., moving from $128 to $137 over the same time period) suggests that at least some beef producers are eager once again to disregard the market lessons of the past.

Let me quickly acknowledge that there are times when history does a rotten job of correctly anticipating the future. It's certainly possible that ranchers and feedlot managers are now set to be better served by visionaries than historians.

Indeed, would-be visionaries are not without impressive arguments. For starters, new-crop corn futures have imploded close to 70 cents since late May. Then add in the fact that October live cattle have appreciated more than $3 within the same timeframe.

Finally, scoffers of price history (i.e., fed prices have never exceeded a quarterly price average of $125.54) passionately insist that cattle feeders are moving into the tightest supplies of calves and yearlings ever seen in modern business history.

Part of me wants to give credit where credit is due. If the average price of corn in the new feeding year is more than $2 below the ugly feed bunk reality of 2012-2013, then producers are certainly looking at the potential of significantly more manageable breakevens and profit opportunities.

But building a bridge between now and then seems to be tapping the wrong kind of experience. I hope I'm wrong.

My Dad was a great believer in the redeeming promise of life-long education. He'd always say: "I expect to be wrong now and then, but I don't have to live with it."

Almost in the next breath, he'd sigh: "School may be nice and necessary, but boy do I get sick of paying that tuition."

Amen.

(AG)

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