Jon Angell

I’ve come to realize that I like stories in which a person, or group of people with a good cause takes on the heavy hand of government and prevails.

I’ve shared several of these stories within these pages, and with this month’s feature, I have another with Ron Hines. Besting the State of Texas in the Judicial system isn’t an easy accomplishment, but it seems that Ron has. Besides that, he seems to have lived an interesting life despite a serious life changing injury when he was young.

Also on the front page, the abrupt closure of Tyson’s Joslin, Ill. plant is big news, affecting many of our readers. If not directly, the ripples of indirect effects will be touching most. Analyst Brad Kooima noted, “If you have fat cattle East of I-35 you are going to notice that Joslin is gone.”

This is going to create a soft spot for cash cattle and create a whole bunch more freight requirements. Although the industry has been expecting more closures to shrink overcapacity in processing, Joslin closing caught many by surprise for numerous reasons.

For local cattlemen, Joslin’s closing was the second blow in a one-two punch. In August the Agri Star plant in Postville, Iowa caught fire (see story page 12 and page 7).

Agri Star was another influential market to the high quality fed cattle in the area. It specialized in serving the Kosher food market and was consistently a strong bidder for quality fed cattle in many of the livestock markets. The good news is latest news implies that the Postville plant has every intention of building back.

Take heart that we do have some hopes that maybe these setbacks will be softened, as this should spur the new Heartland plant in Missouri to ramp their fed cattle harvest much faster. We don’t know if over time the situation will be better or worse; only that it will be different.

The new world screwworm (see page 15) is still in the news. The alarm and dread around it crossing the border into the USA has been overhyped to this point. We are dealing with it, moving to reopen the border to the cattle trade, and it hasn’t yet been the disaster many anticipated.

Unfortunately, our friend Alan Guebert on page 5 pens a farewell Farm and Food File column. Way back in the Spring of 2005 when I was doing my due diligence on how to enter the publishing business, Alan was there. His column appeared in the first issue and every issue till this last one. Always timely, professional, and well written. For your humble publisher, Alan has been very encouraging and helpful in sending me personalized notes or calling and taking calls. Alan was there, and I appreciate it.

His column also gave some needed balance. Alan and I often looked at the same information and drew different conclusions because we had different life experiences and held different perspectives. This was very healthy, not only for newspaper content, but it pushed my own convictions on polices, regulations, and generally many other things.
I know many readers favored Alan’s take, while others not so much. I know this because when I asked for reader feedback, Food and Farm File was one of the most mentioned… pro and con.

We are going to miss Alan’s contribution.

Losing the Guebert column is part of what I hinted at in making some changes from last month, but there are other things. Looking for other syndicated columns to fill this void is hard, and there are few to choose among. If any of you are writers and have a strong agriculture aptitude, I’d think a syndicated column would be an easy sell.

Alan’s slowing down, it wasn’t that he couldn’t sell his work. Heck, I bet to the right candidate, Alan would hook you up and get you started.

I’m going to try to push for some more original content, which has been difficult in the past few years. I have made contact with a university professor that had some good leads. But, changes aren’t limited to content.

Much like everywhere, the expenses have been rising. Distribution and postage is becoming a much bigger hurdle. For those of you opting for home delivery, that price is going to have to rise regardless of if the carrier does a good job or not.

Don’t get me started with the government monopoly quality of service. Even your local USPS folks are angry with the grief they get from the decisions and operations upstream.

Besides that, I need to increase revenue to cover these costs. I have wonderful supporting advertisers, and although I have held rates steady for many years, an adjustment consideration must be looked at. But they too have seen increased costs, so I am not sure it makes sense to do much with that.

If you look at our papers over the years and compare to other publications, we have always been content heavy and paid advertising light.

So, the ratio of advertising to content must rise. We can cut back on the pages printed, or I will have to work harder to sell and place more ads. My preference is to sell more ads. So if you have a business our readers could benefit utilizing, let’s get something going!

If you are a customer to a current advertiser, let them know you “appreciate them advertising with us” and you “are a reader and you noticed.”

If you are in the market for a product or service and you like our paper, give our advertisers an opportunity to work with you.

I still like snail mail. So, if you have suggestions, leads for stories, leads for content, leads for advertising, or just general comments on what we are doing, write me a letter, put a stamp on it and drop it in the mail slot.

For now, thanks for reading and your continued support for our efforts!

Send questions, story ideas, criticism, encouragement to:
Jon Angell
Publisher CA
PO Box C
Centralia MO 65240