Behind the Scenes

So long to an old friend. . .

Tom Steever is visiting an “alma mater” of sorts today.  In his words:

I made a trip to the Sioux Falls Stockyards not only out of editorial duty to one of the last cattle auctions to be held at the 92 year-old market, but also out of nostalgia for a fading, yet functional piece of history. The market will cease its cattle auctions June 25. While the hog and sheep divisions of the once thriving livestock market will remain, the cattle division is closing.

In the 1990s, I spent four years employed as executive secretary of the Stockyards Exchange, the entity making up the eight commission firms at the time as well as some of the order buyers on the market. Many of those firms no longer exist and many of the order buyers have left the market.

The city of Sioux Falls has grown weary of the runoff from the yards and unless the total cattle division was to be put under a roof such as the sheep and hog divisions are, the market would often be in violation of municipal regulations governing such things. That’s a contributing factor for the cattle sales’ end, but the market is also losing money. Changing times, different marketing avenues and competition from other markets has kept the stockyards in the red for too long to suit owners Canal Capital Corporation.

There were about 450 market cattle at Wednesday’s sale; barely enough to keep auctioneers Joel Westra and Keith Elbers going for 2 ½ hours. Buyers and sellers that I talked to lament the passing of the sales. Venerable market man Jim Woster, a 43-year veteran of cattle brokerage and market reporting on the market, says the auction is reliable form of price discovery.

“By the time you’ve spent a day watching 3000 cattle sell,” he said, referring to better days, “you have a pretty good idea what they’re worth.”

Turnover at the yards is the exception rather than the rule. Many of those who’d been there for decades by the time I arrived in 1993 are still going strong today. The faces are longer today because of the inevitable last draft of cattle nearing the gate, but they’re sticking around to the end, serving their hard working cattle producing customers as they have all along.

“It’s sad,” Jeff Schneekloth told me. The cattle broker is a young man, but he’s been at the yards for 30 years having started under his dad’s leadership at Siouxland Livestock commission firm while still in high school. Jeff and many of his colleagues in similar circumstances will stay in the livestock business by buying cattle for customers who need them, but they’ll miss selling cattle, which is the primary nature of their craft at the yards. Others I talked to are undecided about what’s in store. It’s been their work home for years and moving on is something to which they’re unaccustomed.

In some ways, I guess I’m relieved to have been here for this sale rather than the final one next week. It’s a story one would just as soon never report, and in this case, it’s a very personal story for me. It puts at loose ends some of the most salt of the earth people around and it leaves a hole in cattle price discovery and in the choices livestock producers have in where to market cattle.