Historic St. Paul Stockyards closing

The big city, central stockyards have been an endangered species for a couple of decades, at least. As first Chicago, then Denver, Kansas City, Omaha and finally Ft. Worth shut down, a whole new era in livestock marketing has opened up.

It's hardly a footnote to history then, when the St. Paul Stockyards hangs 'em up this Friday, April 11.

The unions and railroads, who quit hauling livestock, started the trend, which led to the shutdown of the multi-story, inefficient packing houses in the stockyards district of big cities. Non-union firms built single-level, assembly line packing plants out in the country where the cattle are, in far-off places like Stratford, Texas, Guymon, Oklahoma, Garden City, Kansas and Greeley, Colorado. Packer buyers bought cattle direct at the feedlots and had them shipped straight to the nearby packing plant. No central stockyards was needed to add to the shipping and feed bill, stress the cattle and cost a commission or two.

Feeder cattle, those sold as calves and light yearlings not yet ready for the feedlot, had long ago quit going through big city stockyards. Corrupt commission firms and their traders at the central stockyards finally drove ranchers to trade in the country, either directly to order buyers or through country auctions that grew quite large in places like Torrington, Wyoming and Roswell, New Mexico. The last vestige of a big city stockyards is in Oklahoma City, where commission firms still operate and trade feeder cattle. Numbers are down, but still large enough to sustain the operation.

This system has changed too, as video and on-line auctions of feeder cattle have grown to market several million head of feeder cattle annually. Buyers and sellers both have taken quite a liking to this system. For buyers, they get ranch-fresh cattle shipped directly off the ranch, straight to the grow lot or feedlot without passing through a sale barn or a few traders along the way, losing their bloom or picking up diseases.

For the seller, his cattle are video taped on the ranch, and shown on the satellite auction. Buyers bid by watching the sale on their home or office television or on line, calling in on an 800-number. If it's a down day on the market, the seller can choose not to take the bid and run his cattle through again or sell them direct. He still gets the advantage of exposing his cattle to many buyers, bidding against each other for his cattle without the expense of shipping them to the sale barn and taking whatever they bring that day. The auction method, with competitive bidding, is a far superior way to set prices than taking the word of an order buyer who rolls up on your ranch, frequently to lowball your cattle.

While it's nostalgic to mourn the loss of central stockyards, the fact is that the world has changed and will never go back to the old way of doing things. Those old dinosaur stockyards are more valuable now for their real estate.

It all falls back to the old economic principle of "highest and best use." The land is now more valuable than the stockyards.
I guess that's what you call progress.