“The customer is always right!” is a saying that most of us grew up with. It’s also a principle that seems to be applied religiously in the cattle industry. It’s all about what a link further up the value chain desires or demands. For the cow-calf producer, the customer is most often the feeder and processing segments of the beef industry.
Let’s challenge this notion with an anecdote from India.
With over 1.4 billion people, India has more wealth and more poverty than almost anywhere else. This lends itself to a culture of begging. Being culturally generous, the wealthy engage in informal charity daily. The product, in this anecdote, is a lady begging at an intersection, the customer is a wealthy driver stopped at the red light. This is ubiquitous across the country.
The premium product, however, is a lady holding a baby while begging. This situation pulls harder on the heart strings of those with means. The platinum product is a maimed or blind child in the arms of the begging lady. This, unfortunately, has created a phenomenon of orphans being abused and deformed by their thuggish guardians or kidnappers in order to earn the premium from the charitable givers (customers).
Tragic, evil, and repulsive! The customer is NOT always right!
I would like to propose that we do not need to handicap our cowherds in order to appeal to our customer’s every desire. When cow-calf producers try to satisfy their customers (feeders and packers), they are forced to produce large, lean, high-input, late-maturing animals that will not work on the ranch without excessive amounts of feed.
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