Mexico’s HERMOSILLO Rancher Mart n Ibarra Vargas, who had intended to improve his family’s financial situation by selling his calves across the northern border after two years of extreme drought, was devastated when the United States suspended the importation of live cattle from Mexico.
Ibarra Vargas has raised cattle on the arid land of Sonora, the northwest Mexican state that borders the United States, especially Arizona, for a considerable amount of time, just like his father and grandparents did. Although his family has experienced harsh droughts in the past, they have never had to deal with the financial impact of a new scourge: the flesh-eating parasite known as the New World Screwworm.
Concerns about the flesh-eating maggot that has been discovered in southern Mexico and is moving north have led U.S. agriculture officials to suspend live cattle crossing the border for the third time in eight months, in July.
Any warm-blooded species, including humans, can have its tissues invaded by the screwworm, which is a larva of the Cochliomyia hominivorax fly. The parasite penetrates the skin of animals, resulting in serious harm and perhaps lethal sores. Herds are seriously threatened by infected animals.
In June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared that it is a “devastating pest” that threatens “our livestock industry, our economy, and our food supply chain.” Other measures have been taken to prevent it from entering the United States, which exterminated it decades ago.
The United States is getting ready to produce and release billions of sterile flies in southern Texas and Mexico as part of its plan. In the wild, the sterile males are supposed to mate with females who will not have children.
Imports of horses and bison are likewise prohibited in the United States. It affected the ranching industry, which was already suffering from drought, particularly the cattle export industry, which brought in $1.2 billion for Mexico the previous year. Less than 200,000 head of cattle have been exported by Mexican ranchers this year, less than half of what they have historically sent over the same time frame.
By Sonora’s beef-centric standards, Ibarra Vargas is a very tiny rancher, so his inability to ship his calves across the border has caused him to reevaluate everything.
As a result of the U.S. government’s repeated prohibitions on Mexican cows, his family has turned to beekeeping, sheep farming, and cow’s milk sales. Even though his income is a small portion of what he made from exporting live cattle, he is making an effort to survive these hard times.
His phrase “Tiempos de vacas flacas” refers to the skinny cows’ times.
The 57-year-old, wearing a white cowboy hat, added, “At least it lets us continue” ranching.
Reinvent to survive
Ranchers in Sonora have been forced to look for other markets even as they step up their efforts to ensure that the parasitic fly never enters their state.
They have sold over 35,000 mature cows in Mexico in the last two months, but at a considerable loss.
“We couldn’t wait any longer,” Sonora Regional Cattle Union President Juan Carlos Ochoa stated. He said that the price difference for those sales was “35% lower compared with the export value of a cow.”
Given the escalating cost of beef in the United States, that is difficult to accept.
Imports of cattle were first halted in the United States last November. Since then, Mexico has reported more than 2,258 screwworm cases. The cows’ sores must be healed, the maggots must be manually removed, and anti-parasite medication must be used as part of the treatment.
Additionally, some ranchers have begun selling beef at retail through upscale butcher shops known as “meat boutiques.”
Although there are other international markets, including as Japan, transporting calves to feedlots in the United States is a very different operation from shipping vacuum-sealed steaks across the Pacific. Making the switch is difficult.
An uncertain future
Ibarra Vargas said he still hasn’t worked out how he can endure a prolonged period of not being able to ship his calves to the U.S., as they ran from one end of a small corral to the other, mooing, wanting to be fed.
In order to preserve the little family ranch that has endured for three generations, he had to go on debt after the recent two-year drought depleted his cattle reserves.
The drought caused a 2% decrease in Mexico’s cattle stockpile last year, according to Juan Carlos Anaya, director of Agricultural Markets Consulting Group.
According to Anaya, Mexican ranchers who export are attempting to persuade the United States to distinguish between the conditions in southern Mexico and the northern states that export cattle, where more stringent health and sanitation regulations are implemented, “but the damage is already done.”
Ibarra Vargas stated, “We’re running out of time,” and he already regrets that his kids don’t want to continue the family business. A farmer who “doesn’t have a market or money to continue feeding his calves, it’s a question of time before he says: ‘you know what, this is as far as I go.'”
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