A couple of conversations today gave me a blast from the past. 

"Boy, that was one bear of a Cattle On Feed report!"

And,

"We're going to have market fats aggressively to work through those placements!"

Oh, good grief.  What does that even mean?  What do we think the verb "to market" means?  There are two mistaken definitions that people use for "marketing".  The first is "to sell".  Wrong.  Marketing is BOTH selling and buying.  If all you address is the sell, and ignore the buy, you're going to fail.  Miserably. 

The second erroneous definition of marketing is "to improve demand for the product we sell."  WRONG!  WRONG!  WRONG!  Improving demand for a product that you sell is called ADVERTISING.  We're in deep muck when we can't even match the right word with the right definition.  That's like going through life perpetually referring to "North" as "Right".  That doesn't work too well when you're facing East.  Don't come crying to me when you end up in Buenos Aires.

The big buzz is always about "marketing aggressively".  Well, tell me how selling cattle early helps in the following mathimatical proofs:

SELL 1250# fat steers @ $83.50     

BUY 831# top-quality steers at $99.00 at Imperial, NE

Return on the Gain = $0.53 per pound

Loss per head with a $0.80 cost of gain = ($113.00)

Okay, now kick the finish weight up to 1350 and drop the gain cost to $0.77 because the frame easily allows for that extra 100 pounds, thus averaging the gain cost down a bit:

SELL 1350# fat steers @ $83.50

BUY 831# top-quality steers at $99.00 at Imperial, NE

Return on the Gain = $0.59 per pound

Loss per head with a $0.77 cost of gain = ($93.00)

Let it first be said that both of these scenarios are FLAMING DISASTERS, but the flaming disaster with the 1350# fat is $20 per head less of a flaming disaster than the "aggressively marketed" 1250# fat scenario.  What sane person would engage in a course of action that makes their bottom line WORSE?  And you guys are supposed to be selling the fats early - why?  Because we have to make sacrifices for the greater good?  Because we need to take one for the team?  Yeah, Karl Marx called.  He wants his talking points back, Socialists!    The only way the free market can work is if the participants are always working in their own best interests.  This doesn't mean that we are all heartless, greedy backstabbers.  It just means that we don't do things that are irrational and self-defeating. 

Here's what we need to do:  We need to get our ever-lovin' acts together and learn how to run a feedyard.  Here's your trade:

SELL 1350# fat steers @ $83.50

BUY 992# Med-Lrg 1-2 steers @ Pratt, KS at $85.00

Return on the gain = $0.79

Profit per head with a $0.77 cost of gain = $7.16

Yeah, it's not a fortune, but it is over $100 per head better than what everyone else is doing, and it is PROFITABLE.  This is what we need to be focusing on.  THIS is what matters.  THIS is marketing.  The only aggressiveness we should be engaging in is the aggressive seeking out of PROFIT - not selling cattle early in a ham-handed attempt to alter macro supply dynamics, which don't even matter anyway. 

If we all self-sacrifice ourselves on the altar of "aggressive marketings", there won't be anyone left to reap the rewards before too long.  Tell a friend.

Forecasters are killing the North American Cattle Industry.
"Global warming" is a complete fraud designed to advance the cause of socialism and enslave humanity.
Abortion is the murder of an innocent human being and is never justified under any circumstance whatsoever.
Every human being is a question, to which the ONLY answer is Jesus Christ.