Agmates

• OCCUPATION: Independent cattle producer, feed-yard operator and owner of No Bull Enterprises, which manufactures and distributes a castration device; the Ranch Foods Direct meat company and the Ranch Steakhouse & Market restaurant in Colorado SpringsÂ
• HOMETOWN: Evergreen
• EDUCATION: Attended Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and Lamar Community College before earning his bachelor’s degree in animal science from Colorado State University in 1975
• AGE: 55
• FAMILY: Divorced. Callicrate has one surviving son, Teegan, 20, a student at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. Tyler died in a car accident in 1996, at age 19.
• AWARDS: Westerner of the Year from the Western Ranchers Beef Cooperative; the first Legacy Award from the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association; and the Carl L. King Distinguished Service Award from the American Corn Growers Association
• HOBBIES: Reading, flying
• QUOTE: “Teddy Roosevelt did something about abuse of corporate power with the break-up of the big meat packers, the oil companies, banks, railroads and the tobacco interests. That was a hundred years ago and today we need to do something about it again.”

When you buy from
Ranch Foods Direct, you
are supporting rural
communities and farm
and ranch families who
care for the land and
animals by utilizing
environmentally sound,
humane, and sustainable
production practices.

Article by Jim Bainbridge of the Gazette writes:

Mike Callicrate doesn’t mind a good scrap now and again. He’s a frequent critic of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has taken on Wal-Mart and publicly called the owners of Tyson Foods “old-time gangsters, thugs and thieves.”Â

In Colorado Springs, Callicrate is best known as owner of Ranch Foods Direct meat company and Ranch Steakhouse & Market. Others know him as a staunch advocate for independent ranchers and farmers, a Don Quixote tilting at big agri-business.Â

Callicrate was the lead plaintiff in the first class-action antitrust lawsuit against a major meat packer (Tyson Foods-IBP) since 1921, was one of the driving forces in getting the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) clause written into the 2002 Farm Bill and lately has been fighting for mandatory price reporting in the industry.Â

Callicrate makes about 100 speeches a year to spread the word, often flying to meetings in his 20-year-old Comanche 250 aircraft. As much time as he spends as cattle producer, feed-yard owner and entrepreneur, Callicrate estimates he devotes a third of his time to industry activism.Â

“The most significant thing I do is Ranch Foods Direct,” Callicrate said. “It impacts all my other businesses — producing cattle, the feed yards. Everything. “Without a market I wouldn’t be a cattle producer and Ranch Foods Direct is out there to be that alternative market for myself and to show others it’s possible to do that same sort of thing in their community.” Â

Callicrate moved Ranch Foods Direct to Colorado Springs 3½ years ago to work with G&C, a small meat packing firm in Old Colorado City that he admired for pioneering a technology called “rinsing and chilling.” It removes blood from the beef carcass with a cold saline solution, enhancing the natural meat-tenderizing process and increasing shelf life.Â

Ranch Steakhouse & Market followed in October 2005, Callicrate taking over the Hungry Farmer restaurant building on Garden of the Gods Road and pouring $5 million into renovations and furnishings. But while he works on expanding his businesses here and in St. Francis, Callicrate always has his eye on the big picture.

He believes somebody needs to be willing to speak out about inequities he sees in the food business “or it will only get worse.”Â

Callicrate said Tyson Foods, ConAgra and Cargill control about 80 percent of the American beef market and can dictate the price per head of cattle paid to ranchers and feed-yard operators. In many cases, Callicrate says, this has forced ranchers out of business and raised the price to the consumer while systematically lowering quality.Â

“I think Mike is sometimes wrongfully accused of being a packer basher when what he is really trying to do is create opportunities for ranchers,” said Leo McDonnell of Montana, founder of the cattlemen’s group R-CALF USA, or the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. “He’s been a leader in that arena and I think he’s just as frustrated with the government agencies who are supposed to oversee the industry as he is with the packers.”Â

Growing up the third child of eight in a northern Colorado ranching family and working his way through college by making bull ropes and riding bulls on the pro rodeo circuit, Callicrate has always known the harsh financial realities of rural life. “I just feel so strongly that the food system that we have is wrong,” Callicrate said. “It’s not sustainable, it’s not healthy. It’s economically very destructive, especially to people who produce food as well as to consumers because of all the chemicals and the poor quality product that’s in the system.”Â

But Callicrate has found it slow, hard going, trying to find solutions for independent cattle producers and farmers.Â

- Callicrate and the 30,000 other cattlemen plaintiffs won a $1 billion judgment in the antitrust suit against Tyson in Alabama, but it was overturned on appeal, then denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court this summer.Â

- COOL was made law, but the USDA shelved the requirement that meat packers put the country of origin on their labels, claiming it was too expensive to implement.Â

- Congress passed a bi-partisan bill that requires packers, processors and importers to provide price, contracting, supply and demand information to the USDA, which uses the information to create mandatory price reports for livestock producers. The bill is now facing a court challenge.Â

Callicrate concedes that it is hard to figure how much his activism has cost him, but he says “we can easily say that it’s cost $3 million” in lost customers, legal expenses, travel and lost business opportunities. “Somebody asked me the other day how Ranch Foods is going,” Callicrate said, “and I answered that it’s like climbing Mount Everest every day in a storm.”Â

Ranch Foods Direct, which Callicrate operates in partnership with Wyoming ranchers Doug and Susan Samuelsen and Susan’s father, Neil McMurry, is doing about $300,000 a month in gross sales, but Callicrate says the business is not yet profitable. “This is a new model for the production and distribution of food that the big meat packers really hate,” Callicrate said. “They don’t want consumers having this alternative.

We are always under the gun. Our wholesale accounts are constantly bombarded by predatory pricing from the big guys. I’m a target and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m not complaining at all because I feel I have to do this.”

Visit Mikes web sites:
www.nobull.net
www.ranchfoodsdirect.comÂ

Related Posts

• Feedlotter / Horse Breeder - Asks “Have you Checked Your NLIS Data Base?”
• Brazilian Owned JBS Now Australia’s Largest Meat Processor.
• US Cattle Futures Trader Predicts “Cattle Price Boom”
• Cattle live export is the life blood of the NT cattle Industry.
• Agmates People - Mike Cobb “still working to help Country people”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Cattle Marketing, Feature Articles, R-CALF USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.