Transcript
A (0:01)
You, the listeners asked us to deep dive into the Common Ground coalition that you've been seeing pop up on social media and we are happy to oblige. Crew, let's ranch it up. Good day everyone and thanks for riding with us on this all new episode of the Ranch it up radio show. I'm Jeff Tigger Earhart. A big thank you goes out to our partners for today's episode. I'm Ajit Ingredients bringing us Farmitan and Jorgensen land and cattle, home of the mother Lode sale Keller Broken Heart Ranch. Their elite heifer sale is coming up December 10th Moose Creek Red Angus. Over a thousand head of Red Angus cattle will be dispersed December 22nd and 23rd. RanchChannel.com and Westway Feed Products Cattle Battle. Several of you reached out asking about the Common Ground coalition that has been popping up on social media feeds especially what is it? Who is part of it? What is the purpose? What is it all about? We have those timely answers for you. I bring in Jake Parnell. Jake is the president of Western Video Market, owner and manager of Cattlemen's Livestock Market in Galt, California and one of the co founders of the Common Ground Coalition. Jake, great to bring you back on the program. And you are literally on the road. So I appreciate you putting in the headset and talking with us. We have been seeing and hearing a lot about the Common Ground Coalition lately in light of the comments out of our president and watching the future boards bounce around right in the midst of when loads of producers are shipping and marketing feeder cattle. So let's start here with what is the Common Ground Coalition and how did it get started?
B (1:48)
It started probably 24 months ago and it started in a conversation, in a meeting as we were talking about a bunch of sale barn operators. We're sitting around talking watching our producers retire and dispersal after dispersal after dispersal of these cow herds. And how do we keep, you know, these producers wanting to be in the cow business because for a long time when this thing wasn't profitable for the last decade, for the decades before that, you know, intermixed profit, profitable years. But there's a lot of years when you're, when you're working to pay your bills, when you're ranching and you know, a lot of the second and third generation just weren't coming back to the family farm, especially out where I live, right? A state of 40 million people. Why do they want to go back and help mom and dad on the family farm and get by for, you know, meager means? And so it started as A conversation there. And it evolved into, you know, we need to fly around the country and we need to gather groups of people and listen to what they have to say. Are we on the right path? Does this make sense? Is this conversation we're having not resonating across the country? And so we. We had a meeting in Kansas, and we had a meeting in. In Missouri. We. We moved up into Montana for a meeting. We had two meetings in California where I brought the most diverse group of people I could get. Each. Each meeting, we sat down in a room and talked about what issues are important to you. What do you think needs to happen to keep production agriculture, to keep farming grass, which is what we do, relevant and profitable, or make it more profitable so that this cow herd can ultimately rebuild, so that there is a desire to come back to the. To the family ranch and be a part of, you know, the livestock business. We shouldn't just say cattle. I think sheep are very viable, you know, livestock to talk about that way as well. We collected all of these results and then kind of got together some leaders of us at Livestock marketing Association. And I'll digress a little bit. A lot of people say, well, why does livestock marketing care about this? Well, you know, we do represent our member markets and dealers around the country, but we also are very, very connected to grassroots rural America. We're very connected to the everyday rancher that may not get involved or get very active in different areas of the business. We sat down and said, okay, what are our next steps? We've identified probably six to 10 key areas that resonate, whether you're in Billings, Montana, South Alabama, you know, way out in the west coast or in the Midwest, where politics are different, where environments are different. But one thing is the same, and it's the message we're hearing from these producers. And so we decided that we needed to have what we initially called the Common Ground site. We gathered a list of names nationwide from influencers that we could connect with, from people that we knew that were well connected, that would have good thoughts. And what we were looking for was a. Was to put together a group of people that represented every segment. The packing segment, the feeding segment, the cow calf segment, the yearning operator segment, and everywhere in between. And then a few of us at LMA sat down and discussed these different names and what made sense. We decided that we were going to host the Common Ground Summit. And it happened at Denver, Colorado, and we invited 41 different people from that list to be there. It was one of the more productive two days of my life. I missed one of my Wednesday sales for it. But you get a bunch of people in there and you make it very, very pointed that they are there as individuals. You're representing yourself, you're representing your region, you're representing your industry, but you're doing it as yourself. You're doing it without the messages of any other organization that you may have loyalties to. You are strictly there to talk about the future of the livestock industry. And how can we come together, find common ground, and agree on some issues that we need to go out and fight together that directly affect the everyday producer with no hidden agendas, nothing else behind it except what makes it better for ranchers for rural America in this country? And we came out of there with five points that we all agreed on unanimously in that room. We didn't move on until we talked all the way through them. That's kind of where the coalition officially became the Common Ground Summit became the Common Ground Coalition after that third week of April.