Sort & Cull

Who does Secretary Vilsack think he is, King Solomon?

This may sound like a weird question, but it's exactly what I first thought last week when the would-be wise head of the USDA proposed to settle incessant squabbling within the cattle industry by proposing the creation of a second check-off. This radical suggestion, at once impractical, reeking of bureaucratic overkill, and yet strangely promising, somehow caused me to reconsider the ancient and quintessential story of King Solomon's legendary wisdom.

Suddenly, I was channeling Orville Willis, my old third grade Sunday school teacher, dramatically re-enacting the thrilling and often bloodcurdling chapters of I Kings. For those of you who haven't cracked open your Gideon's lately, permit me to briefly recount this iconic tale of Old Testament justice and problem solving.

Somewhere in the middle of Chapter 3, we find King Solomon holding court, administrating his vast empire, counseling his 700 wives and 300 concubines (wisdom, where art thou?), and dispensing the height of royal judgment and equity on a case-by-case basis.

In walk two mothers, one baby, and a potential paternity suit. While both women claim to be the real mother, we have been previously informed by the narrator that one of them is a big fat liar who lost her biological child in a tragic accident. She is attempting to steal the other woman's kid, hoping that good, wise, and confused king will ultimately error in her favor.

After listening to the passionate argument ad nauseum (say like Vilsack monitoring contentious representatives of the cattle industry for three years), Solomon decides upon a plan. Calling for his royal sword, he declares that he will cut the live child in half, fairly giving each clamoring mom an equal share of a dead baby.

Of course, when only the real, loving mother objects to the hideous solution, agreeing to give up her genuine claim so that the baby may live, Solomon has successfully revealed the truth and exposed the other woman as a cold-hearted fraud.

It's a great story, a wonderful example of inspiring leadership and conflict resolution. I'm not sure to what extent Secretary Vilsack would be considered a Bible-thumper. But my guess is that he has a copy of the "Good Book" (dog-eared or ceremonial?) somewhere in his desk.

Surely, it's not much of a stretch to think of the beef check-off as a sadly contested baby, a malnourished child (i.e., poorly nursed since its birth in 1986 with a budget of $1 per head, further gutted by nearly 30 years of inflation) claimed by a wide spectrum of prospective parents, all more interested in privileges of discipline than responsibilities of funding.

King Vilsack has been painfully watching cattle mothers fight over "Baby Check-off" since 2011, hoping the adults in the room could compromise enough to ensure the child's future livelihood and effectiveness (i.e., find a way forward to more aggressive funding and meaningful product promotion).

I'm not brave enough today to suggest how particular cattle groups involved in the feckless conversation of the last three years correspond to either the good or bad mother in our Sunday school lesson. For the moment, we'll leave that can of worms unopened and high on the top shelf.

For now, just consider the possibility that Vilsack has run a number out of the Old Testament playbook, that by threatening to cut the baby in half (i.e., moving from one beef check-off to two) he can somewhat break the impasse to necessary check-off reform, prompting recalcitrant parties to compromise because they value the effectiveness of the whole (i.e., one program collecting $2 per head) more than the strict ideological consistency of the parts (i.e., two programs separately collecting $1 per head).

Maybe I'm giving the Secretary too much credit. Maybe I'm even defaming the great Solomon.

The wisdom of Solomon's dangling sword assumed that love would always trump power. Frankly, that may not be a safe assumption when it comes to check-off politics.

For more from John see www.feelofthemarket.com or follow him on Twitter @FeeloftheMarket

(SK)

© Copyright 2014 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.