Tag Archives: politics

First Calves 2026

Posted on August 22, 2026 by John | Leave a comment

Tag 5029

Tag 5026

Tag 5007

Surprised to see three ‘first calves’ this morning from our first calf heifers, photographed to substantiate our Age and Source Verification Program required for our exported beef. We have begun our new year!

The recent notion to import more beef to lower the price of hamburger to consumers in this country also lowers the price to producers who are facing higher prices for fuel and fertilizer, many of whom are in a drought.

INSIDER:

Trump announced a plan to lower beef prices for Americans ahead of the midterm elections.
His administration will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported into the US.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said the decision “undermines American producers.”

America’s largest trade association of cattle producers says President Donald Trump’s plan to lower beef prices is political theater

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which represents more than 175,000 cattle producers and feeders, said on Friday that the strategy would do more harm than good for the industry. Earlier that day, Trump said the US would allow up to 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported with no out-of-quota tariff over the next 90 days.

“Today’s announcement is not about helping producers,” the association said on X. “It’s not about putting their finger on the scale for one cattle industry group or another. It is 100% about the 74 days between now and the midterm elections.”

In the same X thread, the association said that encouraging more beef imports undermines American cattle producers at a time when they’re making decisions about rebuilding their herd numbers for next year. The association also said the administration’s “repeated whiplash on trade policy and beef imports” directly affects rural cattle producers.

“US farmers and ranchers need stability,” the group said. “Unlike spur-of-the-moment trading decisions made based on White House social media posts, the decisions and investments ranchers make in their herds are made YEARS in advance, not days or weeks.”

LIARS NEVER PROSPER

Posted on March 3, 2026 by John | 2 comments

    The liars punishment is not in the least that he is
    not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
          - George Bernard Shaw

We look to the gods we know
for retribution, the short proverbs
our long lives have proven true

as we await once certain consequences
yet concerned about our absent deities,
afraid that verbal substitutes like

‘taking care of number one’
becomes the mantra,
becomes the drum

that humanity has learned to march to.
Look away from the circus fools
‘lest we give them credence.

2 Comments

Posted in Poems 2026, poetry

Tagged politicians, politics

RARE EARTH

Posted on December 9, 2025 by John | Leave a comment

No star or moon light,
nor sun upon my skin
for half-a-month
in a cave of fog,

partly insulated
from the shenanigans
of men at the trough
making laws

making sure
they can still deal
a gourmet meal
on the house:

our planet earth
giving up its wealth
instead of wisdom
for those that listen.

RED MEAT SONNET

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John | 3 comments

We’ve let the commentators have their say
as if they understand the price of beef.
We’ve let politicians have their day
pontificating plans that create grief
among both cowmen and folks in town
trying to overhaul how the market works
when demand is more and supply is down
due to drought and the rising costs that hurts
us all. We let them talk, let them repeat
to show what they don’t know when numbers shout
that we have more mouths to fill with red meat
with fewer cows and cowmen due to drought.
We pray for rain and to be left alone
with a little meat still left on the bone.

3 Comments

Posted in Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged beef, cattle market, Drought, politics

Beef

Posted on November 16, 2025 by John | 2 comments

Lots of commentary on the cattle business lately with a focus on the price of beef. But relative to inflation, $20 will buy a cheeseburger, fries and a soda or a USDA Choice New York steak at Costco. What a deal!

Our 4-year drought (2012-2016) doesn’t seem that long ago when we had to cull some older bred cows for slaughter in order to feed the rest of our herd expensive hay. A good part of the reason why producing cow numbers are at a 75 year low. Though the media has its red meat theories, nobody mentions that the US population has more than doubled since 1951. This is simple to understand: supply and demand.

KEEPING SECRETS

How do they know, these old fat cows
that read a baggy sadness in my walk
among them checking irons as they pull

alfalfa stems apart to tongue green leaf
in the corral? The gates are set, waiting
for the truck to town. There is nothing

right about the moment, that they know—
little consolation in my voice, they eye me
suspiciously searching for details

in my muted gestures. If I told them
all I know of town, of auction rings
and rails, they would all revolt

for the brushy hills, lay fences down
to take their chances without water
through the summer—that I know.

-JCD (“Best of the Dry Years, 2012-2016”)

The three variables for the cattle business are weather, price and politics, any one which can reduce our once-a-year paycheck to a loss, but two or more can be an economic disaster—none of which have we, nor the government, any control over.

In the photo above, Robbin and I fed a few replacement heifers before the forecast Atmospheric River. The grass geminated last month has become short and spotty and we have to keep them in shape to cycle and breed when we turn the bulls out in two weeks—just part of the business.

As I write, it’s been raining overnight.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged beef, Drought, Dry Creek, photography, poetry, politics, rain, red meat, water, weather

INTO FRESNO

Posted on May 2, 2025 by John | 4 comments

              We ride all day 'till the sun's going down
              I'm gonna be glad to get out of this town.
	           - Charley Willis (“Goodbye Old Paint”)

Into Fresno for the first time in years
to carve cancer off my face

                with the cars and trucks, all makes, 
                all sides, both ways, packed parking, 
                debt-ridden drivers cooped-up 
                in caves and castles busy being 
                where there is no place 
                without more of the same 
                for miles

                and I’m scared—
not of the knife, nor of the scar—
but way too tight for my old heart.

It is a race now, but slowing near the finish line—
time to identify new wildflowers, measure rain
for posterity, data to apply to reason, to a pattern
for those of us who believe not everything is random

chaos, turbulence and tornadoes inside the Capitol
of the planet where the big guns make money
playing chicken, or blind man’s bluff 
for the rest of the resources we’ve about used-up

especially space without trace or track
of humankind—

                 the dogwood creek’s short cast 
                 for snowmelt rainbows where 
                 even a child would not go hungry.

I can go back anytime I want 
to escape or wait 
until the job’s done.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry

Tagged "Goodbye Old Paint", Charley Willis, poetry, politics, progress, Tex Ritter

FIREBREAKS

Posted on April 19, 2025 by John | Leave a comment

Blading the season’s last green grass
for firebreaks, I need to concentrate
far away from the world’s turmoil,

peel the weeds out of the soil
or sever their roots, over and over
the same ground until smooth—

an impatient perfectionist,
carving a twelve foot road
the cattle will travel and dimple

like a golf ball, but will stop fire
if not too windy to ignite
wild oats and tall dry feed

easier than I can throttle back
the flow of pompous rhetoric
that has ignited global animosity.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN

Posted on April 3, 2025 by John | 11 comments

Out here in the California heartland
beyond the peeling billboards
that once announced
every fruit and vegetable
capital of the world
removed from Highway 99,
swapping crops
for air conditioned shopping malls –
neutered Valley towns
given-up their figs
to farm people instead,
I can’t tell Turlock from Modesto.

Out here between the furrows where
every Mom and Pop grocery store,
fruit stand, bar, bait and tackle shop
under one flat roof is boarded-up,
old gas pumps frozen
like soldiers from the Fifties
waiting for a windshield
or dip-stick to check
or if the kids are over
the mumps or chicken pox yet.

And Congressman,
I know we can’t go back –
that the rest of you must
have great big plans
we can’t comprehend,
that you all have your own dream
of what you can do with the harvest:
your ledger of plastic magic debts –
but what happens
when the tree grows
too far from its roots?

We are the tendrils
burrowing in the dirt where
what little water left
is pumped into food
we can’t sell at a profit
anymore
and I was wondering
how do we fit your vision
of the new millennium?
How are you going to keep us
producing
like numb milk cows to stanchions
without kicking down
with a little more cash
or bigger rations?

Or have you dealt us out
for some fresh field workers
not yet addicted to
electricity or TV,
never driven a tractor or new car
or had to pay
license and insurance yet
with nothing to lose
but their innocence?

Dear Congressman,
I couldn’t sleep again tonight
trying to figure how it’s going to work
and thought I’d write and ask you
before
I invest another decade in the soil:
how in the hell can we stay
to pay the bills and still
subsidize your consumption?
You don’t need my vote
and not enough will hear
whatever good or bad I might say
about you to matter,
but I thought I’d ask
one human to another:
do you really have a plan?

Not much has changed. Written in 1998 and included in “Poems from Dry Creek” (Starhaven)