State beef checkoff a bust for Missouri cattle farmers

As a Missouri cattle producer, I oppose the $1 a head state beef checkoff. The state government wants to take another $2.2 million from beef producers every year, and then turn around and give our money to the Missouri Beef Industry Council, an unaccountable private entity, which, according to them, has "no obligation to disclose documents" about how our money is spent.

I've heard from hundreds of beef producers across the state who are opposed to this checkoff. Especially at a time when net farm income is expected to drop by 38.2 percent this year, the largest single year decline since 1983. And cattle prices have dropped 30 percent since the beginning of the year. We do not need to be pouring more of our hard-earned money into a totally unaccountable program instead of investing our money in our own operations and local economies.

The current federal checkoff program that Missouri beef producers have paid tens of millions of dollars into has been extremely unsuccessful. Since the checkoff passed, beef consumption has plummeted by 31 percent and we've lost 40 percent of Missouri's beef producers. Now the Missouri Beef Industry Council wants a 200 percent raise, while they have $700,000 of our money in their reserve fund.

How unaccountable can they get? At a meeting of the "Missouri Beef Checkoff Task Force" on Aug. 26, which was stacked with checkoff supporters, their own hand-picked "task force" voted to recommend a 50 cent per head state checkoff tax -- not $1 per head. But, the Missouri Beef Industry Council totally ignored its own task force and asked for a $1 per head tax anyway.

Then the Missouri Department of Agriculture ignored the concerns of thousands of Missouri cattle producers who oppose this state beef checkoff and the behind-closed-doors process being used to implement what amounts to another producer tax.

We have repeatedly voiced our objections to this unconstitutional and untransparent referendum process, including the fact that the Department of Agriculture is not allowing for secret ballots and is forcing producers to provide proprietary business information in order to be eligible to vote. This violates the bedrock principles of democracy.

Supporters of the checkoff claim there will be some way to get a refund after the fact, so they falsely call this a "voluntary" program. In reality, cattle producers are forced to pay into this program by having the money taken out of their checks before they even get them. If the fee is not paid when due, the attorney general can sue us for the collection of checkoff fees and penalties. It doesn't get any more mandatory than that.

This is a bigger fight than just the beef checkoff. It's about what kind of livestock production we want in Missouri -- corporate controlled, industrial livestock production or a future for family farm agriculture. The answer is not another checkoff program. These checkoffs are obsolete ineffective programs that benefit packers and public relations firms and that promote out-of-state and foreign produced beef. This is truly a fight for independence, democracy and family farms.

Roger Allison is a cattle farmer in Howard County. Missouri and executive director of Missouri Rural Crisis Center.