The American Feed Manufacturers Association and its members scored successes in 1969 and 1970. One example: The Association of American Feed Control Officials approved collective terms for ingredient identification in mixed feeds, allowing feed manufacturers to more fully use least-cost formulations. Also, the model feed bill that AFMA and AAFCO had developed was revised to incorporate federal Good Manufacturing Practices by reference.
When AFMA included a few liquid feed specialists on its 1970 convention program, organizers were amazed by the high turnout and interest. The next year, the association formed the Liquid Feed Committee and launched the Liquid Feed Symposium, an annual meeting and program ever since.
AFMA marked a new milestone in information services with its 1970 publication of Feed Manufacturing Technology, a 600-page hardcover reference book for feed manufacturers. The original 19 chapters prepared by 70 contributing editors would be revised in four new editions in the next 40 years to keep it current.
As the federal government spent through the 1960s to fight the war on poverty and the war in Vietnam, it did not raise taxes. Yet inflation rose as American prosperity declined. President Richard Nixon had opposed wage and price controls, but in August 1971 he reversed course and decided to impose controls to fight inflation. The public applauded the move as a way to stop price-gouging, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average responded with a record-setting one-day gain. But the feed industry shifted into emergency mode, and AFMA led the response.
“The biggest single problem we faced during my years at AFMA was price controls during the Nixon administration,” said Oakley Ray, former AFMA president, in a 2008 interview. “That just tore our industry apart.” The Price Commission aimed to limit annual price increases to 2.5 percent. “There was only one person on the Price Commission who understood agriculture,” said Ray. “We were just working pretty much around the clock on it and trying to get members informed on what the regulations were.” The commission changed price base periods and rules several times. “About the time we would get the members informed, there would be some change in the rules. The traditional feed manufacturers ... would have to take a number of their feeds off the market because they couldn’t produce them and make a profit.” Price Commission members “couldn’t understand why anyone would change prices more often than twice a year. All our members ... they changed prices every week.”
“We made a pitch to the Price Commission that it wasn’t necessary in our industry, and it was not accomplishing anything,” said Ray. The commission response was slow, but persistence paid. “We were one of the first industries to get decontrolled.”
In early 1973, the Price Commission was disbanded. But by that time, the feed industry and all of U.S. agriculture had been swept up in soaring prices ignited by massive sales of U.S. wheat to the Soviet Union beginning in 1972.
U.S. feed manufacturers and other grain buyers had been working on their summer booking programs, anticipating the normal fall harvest price declines and agreeing to buy farmers’ grain with guarantees against price declines. When the Russian grain sales hit, instead of going down in the fall of 1972, prices soared.
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AFIA members in front of the Capitol after a Legislative Conference in the 1980s. Photo: Courtesy of AFIA’s Oakley Ray.
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