Eastern Missouri Commission Co.

For those of you who have grown to look forward to Susan Denkler’s features each month, probably noticed right off that I stepped up to the challenge. Susan has taken leave for a few months to help a family member who has taken ill. Bare with me as I don’t have her experience. I enjoyed the process up until the point when it came to the actual writing. Nothing compares to on the job training and the knowledge that if it is to be it is up to me; which is what I faced for this issue.

This month you will find several stories that involve criminal activity. It gives this month’s issue more weight as far as hard news, but I am sure you will agree I would much rather it not be out there for us to report. You would expect us to carry a story in our publication on cattle rustling as is reported on the front page. You know that such things are getting out of hand when main stream news such as MSNBC (the source of the article) is sending reporters to get the scoop in our overlooked part of the country.

Until this week I have never read through court papers. I was at the Attorney Generals website grabbing the press release of the verdict against then the Howard County bait and switch cattle swapping bunch. I happened upon a link that said “read the findings of fact, conclusions of law and judgement.” This totaled 92 pages of what I found rather interesting reading. Of course I am a believer in the use of livestock markets. For those of you who insist on buying cows “in the country” from strangers this may be worth your time in reading so that you can clearly identify some of the many pitfalls to be avoided. I have heard of similar stories all my life, although on a smaller scale, and the sad thing is that I fully expect to keep hearing these stories.

As reported in last month’s issue, expect out area of the world will continue to feel the effects of the Gieseker collapse for some time to come. The coffee shop talk has attributed several ills back to this as the root cause. Rumblings such as these are hard to verify and can’t be printed. I can say that I know of one instance of cattle sales through our market rooted back to Gieseker. The farmer had been one of the lucky farmers who happened to be settled up when the grain dealer was shut down. However the farmer had a government grain loan on the grain he had sold and had paperwork showing the loan deducted from his grain check. However the FSA office had no record of where the grain dealer had paid the loan according to the farmer I spoke to. He was selling cattle the other week to quickly raise $30,000 to pay the loan that he thought was already paid. I would expect that this farmer was not alone in this predicament.

On page 7, Lee Pitts gives a light hearted take on a solution to the problems we are facing nationally. I admit at times to having similar thoughts. On page 4, Justin was on a tear for this month. I spent a considerable amount of time editing, so as to make it politically acceptable in certain areas to allow for publication. I still wonder if I did enough. Our family has been in the livestock marketing business for three generations. With that kind of background we have either seen or have had stories told to us of just about everything that can happen in marketing cattle. I also know that no market can be the best at everything to everybody. I believe that to summarize Justin’s thoughts, he believes that EMCC comes as close as any market of covering the most customers well, and every market has its benefits and distractions, even EMCC. We are blessed in our part of the world to having many options for marketing cattle and if you are to a place where you trying to sort things out, he would be pleased to help you as would I.

We were able to pack in a lot for this issue. Considering where I started at the beginning of the month knowing that Susan would be gone, I am surely relieved. I hope you enjoy this issue, drop me a note with any story suggestions after a short rest I can begin to stress all over again…