– Dr. Andrew Griffith, Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Tennessee
When it comes to sale barns, are we comparing ‘apples to apples?’
A question was recently asked concerning where a person should market their calves. There are many people who think marketing calves at one sale barn is better than marketing at another sale barn. There is no way to convince those people otherwise, and there is nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree. However, if those same people have one bad experience at the sale barn they think is the best then they decide that particular livestock auction is terrible.
The simple truth of the matter is that 99 percent of the time the cattle will bring exactly what they are worth regardless of the livestock auction they are sold through. There are instances when some cattle bring less than their true value due to a certain buyer missing a sale, but these are rare cases.
The issue with most peoples’ disgruntlements concerning the price received is when they compare the price they received to what others received. This happens when they are trying to compare apples to oranges and they are actually comparing chocolate covered strawberries and iceberg lettuce.