Many years and many good pairs of shoes later, I still follow that advice. There are some things worth paying for, especially if they make life and work easier.
Apparently, some corporate titans don’t grasp that idea of value, even with their own products. Take the recent news about Hewlett Packard.
HP is the market leader in personal computer production, but stunned investors this summer by announcing it was ditching the PC business. Some analysts compared this news to McDonald’s dropping out of the hamburger business.
But the company said PCs were a losing strategy, proven by so many consumers turning to Apple’s juggernaut, the iPad.
Far be it from me to tell Silicon Valley how to run its enterprise. But it was laughable when HP also not only dropped its new TouchPad tablet device – built and marketed as an alternative to the iPad – but did so at a bargain price.
Just like that, consumers who paid 400 bucks for a TouchPad, saw the price fall to $99 just weeks after its release. Whoever said technology wasn’t cheap never saw a computer giant evolve into a hasty yard sale.
Believe it or not, this kind of confusion offers some valuable lessons to producers in agriculture.
Of all the innovation that has emerged in recent years, nothing captures producers’ interest quite like genetics.
Today’s common producer uses genetic and reproductive tools that were just a speck of discovery a generation ago.
The results are more efficiency in nutrition, daily gain, birth weight and hybrid vigor during the lifetime of their cattle.
The key marketing element is that bull buyers not only understand good genetics – but they grasp the fact that it’s going to require the extra investment.
Seedstock producers know that a bull selection decision has to be right the first time. As Tom Field of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association puts it – you don’t bargain shop for bulls.
You can bargain shop elsewhere in your operation – but not on genetics. Doing otherwise would jeopardize your bottom line, as well as your commercial cow-calf clientele.
The next few months may mark a critical point in beef production, as prices keep climbing in a period of tight supply.
The day will come when rebuilding the herd becomes the top priority – and the focus may be to do it fast and cheap.
Let’s hope producers don’t sub quality genetics with expediency in a calf crop. It would be foolish to undervalue the key tools that got beef where it is today. 
