Comment Text:
Dear Sirs:
Our family is composed of independent cow-calf producers in the "Tri-state" area of Eastern Iowa, NW Illinois and SW Wisconsin.
We're very concerned about the fact that commodities are now controlled and manipulated by speculators who have nothing to do with commodity production or true price discovery. If one watches the financial news channels or programs people are encouraged to "play the commodity markets" with various strategies, including program trading, flash trading and numerous other gimmicks.
The result is that those of us who work 10 hours per day PRODUCING the commodities are entirely manipulated out of existence in many cases. Cattle operators have been reduced from 1.7 million in 1980 down to just about 850,000 today, Poultry has no independent producers today, and the CASH hog market is less than 5%.
One of the ways price manipulation occurs is through vertical integration and lack of anti-trust activity. Big money controls the commodity prices, and those with no cattle control the cattle market.
The few remaining independent cattlemen ask our government to prevent price manipulation through (1) enforcement of the PSA through new regulations, (2) anti-trust activity to prevent wild speculation in commodities by the gamblers. We're being killed by the Big 3 meatpackers and the speculators.
Please DO something to help us!
