The following is in response to my asking an investigative reporter to clarify facts regarding NCBA & Packers.

Re: Your question about the NCBA board.  NCBA likes to tout that a majority of its board is made up of cow/calf and stocker operators.  Here are the facts.  Seats on the NCBA board must be purchased.  You can visit the NCBA website to find out the current pricing for board seats, but if I remember correctly the base price for the first seat is $10,000.  Additional seats are much higher. 
 
States like Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska and California - where cattle feeding is concentrated - collect involuntary dues from people who feed in NCBA affiliated feedlots.  The dues are simply collected on yardage invoices.  Therefore, these states have far more money than other states like the northern plains where cattle feeding is not concentrated.   NCBA affiliates in those states purchase multiple seats on the board.  Texas Cattle Feeders, Kansas Livestock Association, Nebraska Cattlemen, Iowa Cattlemen, California Cattlemen collectively hold enough votes on the NCBA board to control policy.  Other states simply do not have the money to spend buying enough voting seats to effect policy.   
 
The packers do NOT need to have a majority of seats on the NCBA board in order to control things and they don't.  They simply show up at the meeting, parade down the aisle and sit in the front of the room, turn their chairs around and stare at those feeding states and guess what?  The feeding states vote as dictated when the vice presidents of major packer's cattle procurement divisions are watching. 
 
The NCBA board is divided into two divisions - policy and federation.  We used to call it dues and checkoff.  What I just referred to in the paragraphs above is the dues side, which sets policy.  The federation (or checkoff) division is structured the same way, meaning that votes are purchased on the federation side of the NCBA board.  States use checkoff funds to purchase those voting seats.  Again, the feeding states have control because that's where the most cattle transactions take place, putting the money (and control) into their hands. 
 
A number of times over the years there's been movements to attempt to change the structure at NCBA and all have failed.  It's simply impossible to out vote those in control.  Texas Cattle Feeders Association, for example, sinks hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars each year into seats on both sides of the NCBA board.  So does KLA.  Collectively all the other member states don't have enough votes to out vote them.  Colorado Cattlemen's Association I believe holds three voting seats currently compared to TCFA's 19 or 20 - just on the dues side. 

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