Marketing opportunities continue to change...and stay the same...

By MONETTE TAYLOR | South Central Texas

J.D. Sartwelle, Jr.

October 4, 2001 -- At a recent meeting at the Luling Foundation in Luling, local producers heard a program concerning beef cattle marketing opportunities.

J.D. (Bubba) Sartwelle, Jr. from the Port City Stockyards in Houston discussed "price discovery through the competitive bidding process at local auction markets."

"We've got more markets...on a per cow basis...in the State of Texas than any other state or region in the whole nation," said Sartwelle.

As Sartwelle said, he felt like he was "talking to the choir," but was happy to see a good turnout on a Saturday morning when most of the producers could have been harvesting their hay.

A 1963 graduate of A&M University, Sartwelle has been in the cattle industry all his life, as was his father.

He briefly discussed the history of the marketing industry, and explained the changes and timelines involved.

"We started with private treaty sales. In the late '30's, auctions started, and by the '50's, most markets formed and were used for the first time," said Sartwelle.

"A lot of our history...as producers...has been here from the start (of the livestock market). We were production oriented, all of us. Through the '20's, '30's and '40's, we saw such great strides in our production end of it, and the marketing end kind of took care of itself."

Sartwelle said that although it has taken a while to get where marketing is, today, for many years it was more of a "hands on" system, until the '70's.

By then, the first video sales were appearing, and a whole new idea of marketing emerged.

"We were going to rely on somebody's ability to describe some cattle to somebody in very few words instead of somebody looking at the cattle," said Sartwelle.

In the mid '80's, Sartwelle participated in eight commingled sales per year with the Brenham Livestock Auction. That accounted for 80 sales a year, and was one of the first groups to try this type of marketing.

"It worked. Kind of came before it's time. Coming through these years, there's probably two things that always stood out in my mind. Number one, the best can always be made better...I hope that we can keep in mind that the best can always be made better," said Sartwelle.

Number two, he talked about a sign he's had on his desk for at least 30 years and of the importance he puts in that quote: "If I do the same thing today that I did yesterday, I will be gone tomorrow."

"It is more important, today, than anytime it's hung on my wall. Not only to us and our business, to you as a purebred breeder, to you as an educator, to us out here as producers...I believe that as fervently as I'm standing right here," he said.

"Today, we're full of all kinds of fancy workers. We're in the 'dot com' society. We've got to have an acronym for everything. I think it all started 10-12 years ago when everyone had to have a mission statement.

"I can read more people's mission statements, right now, and not glean one thing from what they've written to me," said Sartwelle.

He explained that...as producers...they have a growing segment where they take an animal and "grow" him or prepare him to go into feed yards. From there they go to the packers, to the grocerers and, finally, to the consumer.

"You guys have to be aware of everyone in the chain," said Sartwelle. From where we are, we've got to consider the environmental adaptability of the cow herd as the very first thing, then productivity," he added.

"We want more and more dollars for our product. We need to accept some responsibilities to the fellow that gets him (cattle) next, to the next and so on."

He said that as Americans, we have reached a point where we are more of a "throw-away" society in that if we decided something isn't good anymore, we discard it before deciding on what might be better.

"I think a lot of us have got in our minds to say our old system of marketing is not doing all it should be doing. We do have other alternatives. I'm here to tell you, I can embrace any marketing alternative if it's done with knowledge and if it's done with competition," said Sartwelle.

"Choose a marketing system that includes some competition, because if it doesn't, I don't know if we're going to find true price discovery in the strictest sense of an economic definition."

He claims that producers and everyone concerned with the markets needs to have a good way of price reporting, but it seems to continue to deteriorate.

"I'm here to tell you, as one who's had a marketing association with the Texas Department of Agriculture and the UDSA for years and years and years...I grew up with it. I believe in it. It's the best thing...as a governmental service that we have available to us.

"We're slowly dismantling that system, on a federal basis, and we've darn sure dismantled it on a state wide basis. These are the things that have gone on," said Sartwelle.

He feels that we have the weakest reporting system that we've had in a long time, and without competition, our markets will decline as others have who traveled the same path in the past.

"I don't think we need to have any great overhauls in the livestock markets, but it probably doesn't hurt for us to do a little 'tweaking'," said Sartwelle.

As he said, nothing has value until the good check is in the bank, and producers need to pay more attention to what they pay out versus what they bring in.

"All kind of alternative marketing systems have a cost attached to them. You're not going to do anything out there to avoid paying a marketing charge. You might avoid a commission, you might avoid a yardage charge, but you're not going to avoid the cost of marketing. it will not work. Your time is worth something," he ended.