Bob Robinson has been around livestock as long as he can remember. As he
grew up near Rockland, a dusty speck on the map of southeastern Idaho, he
would watch cowboys drive cattle across the farm his family owned.
Robinson and his father would often ride out to help them. Robinson was
barely a teenager when he went on his first cattle drive in the mid-1940s.
"Back in those days, nobody had a trailer or truck," he says. "When you
moved your cattle, you drove them."
And there was nothing romantic about driving cattle. "It's a dusty
job," says Robinson. "When you are trailing a long way, you might go eight,
nine miles a day with a big bunch of cattle. And then you [have] got to stop
and let them rest overnight. But it's fun. It's something you grow
up with, and like to do."
Robinson learned a lot about livestock during those days. That prepared
him for his current job, which is selling and buying livestock in Jerome,
Idaho, for Producers Livestock Marketing Association. That's a livestock
co-op.
"You have to know cattle or you are going to get yourself in quite a bit
of problems," says Robinson. "Even people who have been in the industry don't
make good cattle buyers."
During Robinson's career, he has seen his industry change a lot. You need
a heck of a lot more money today to become a livestock buyer now, he says.
That's because livestock buyers make their living off volume. The more
they sell, the more profit they make.
That means you have to have plenty of cash (or credit) to buy large volumes
of livestock. You must also have a place to keep the animals you bought before
shipping them off, never mind the cost of shipping several hundred animals
at the same time across hundreds of miles or more.
And because volume is the key to making a buck off bulls, livestock buyers
have to travel a lot. Robinson says he would often travel 400 miles a day,
going from auction to auction.
Thankfully, technology is making life easier. Many auction halls across
North America now hold satellite auctions. Livestock buyers can now reach
across vast distances, time zones and international borders to buy and sell
livestock. Cellphones have also become an indispensable tool of the trade
for livestock buyers. They give them a chance to react quickly when prices
change.
The Internet, of course, is also changing the industry. Several sites now
offer online livestock buying and selling.
And yet you can make a case that the basic culture of livestock buying
has not really changed. For one, you would never confuse livestock buyers
with city slickers. They drive pickup trucks, not SUVs. They work in smelly
auction halls, not sterile boardrooms. And job hazards include herds of large
and unpredictable animals with horns.
There is also a strong sense of individualism and competition among livestock
buyers. This is especially so during an auction. Mark Canart owns a livestock
buying company. He says competing against other livestock buyers for the same
stock of animals is just something special.
And livestock buying is one of the last businesses where a handshake and
a person's word still count, he says. "We do millions of dollars of business
over the phone, and sometimes we don't meet the guy," he says.
But the personal nature of livestock buying also creates barriers. Don
Kracke runs a livestock marketing company with offices in Nebraska and Kansas.
He says it is difficult to become a livestock buyer and seller if you do not
have any connections within the industry.
"If you are new, it's pretty tough because everybody [has] already
got their order buyers they like to use," he says.
It is perhaps even more difficult for women. Consider Jennifer Wood. She
certainly had all the right industry connections. Her father has been a livestock
buyer for decades. Wood remembers traveling with him to auctions by truck
or plane when she was just four years old.
"I guess that is how I got interested in the business," she says.
But the business was not interested in her. So Wood had to prove herself
first in other fields, first as a commercial pilot, later as the manager of
a chain of restaurants and nightclubs. Livestock buying is a tough industry
to get into, she says.
"Because of that, I had to get outside experience just to show people that
I was successful elsewhere before coming into the industry."
Wood is now a success in the livestock industry as the chief executive
of some stockyards, where some 200,000 animals are bought and sold each year.
Wood says others in the industry do not treat her any differently because
she is a woman working in an industry men still dominate. If you want to get
into this business, you must be willing to work your way up, she says. And
this applies for both women and men.
"It was always my dream [to get] involved in this business, and I always
believe in following your dreams," she says.