“Say it again, why y'all

War, huh, good God,

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing, listen to me...”

–Edwin Starr

The biggest hit of Charles Edward Hatcher’s — AKA Edwin Starr's — career was “War,” which stayed No. 1 on the 1970 Billboard Chart’s top 100 songs for three weeks. Starr wrote it as a protest song to the Vietnam War, of which he was a veteran, but 52 years later it seems even more applicable to today’s Ukrainian war.

Every day brings reports of a new level of the war’s terror. We see and hear descriptions of cluster bombs, nuclear plants being attacked and overrun and the Orwellian specter that portends, horrific threats of Russian use of chemical or biological weapons and the feudal-like city sieges depriving trapped Ukrainian citizens of life’s basic necessities of shelter, electricity, water, food and medicine. Plus, we witness the heart wrenching specter of nearly 3 million Ukrainian displaced refugees — predominantly women, children, the infirm and the elderly — fleeing the war’s unprovoked wanton destruction.

Is there any question that this Ukrainian war, fomented by an irredentist Russian despot, has overshadowed all conversations about nearly anything else? None that I know of and that includes a parochial, myopic and certainly in light of the war, mundane discussion of meat marketing.

However, life goes on for us all, doesn’t it? What will be the Ukrainian war’s impact on U.S. domestic meat and poultry marketing? Exacerbated inflation. In America, we are all experiencing inflation-caused higher gas, food and heating costs, which pales in comparison to Ukraine’s citizens seeing their homes destroyed, much less the annihilation of their country’s democratic social fabric.

We can argue ad nauseum whether the war has led directly to higher inflation or not, but that is a useless argument. Suffice it to say that without the war, inflation would not be as top of mind as it is now, but gas would probably still be high. Is there anything we can we do about inflation?

First, we simply will have to suffer inflation unless the Federal Reserve steps in with interest rate adjustments or until it cures itself as most other periods of inflation in our history have. I can remember our country’s last worst inflation that saw home loan interest rates rise above 12% (they are now about 4% and have been there for years), an unemployment rate above 10% (it is now below 4%), long lines at gas pumps to pay inflated prices just to fill up our cars, while our government was trying to fund a Vietnam war and instituting the financing for the Great Society’s reforms all while suffering a population’s “malaise.” What cured all of that? My recollection stops just before the cures began, but it seems the country had to endure these poor economic indicator levels just to cure the problem. Are the rising prices we see now precursors to another round of exacerbated inflation? Unfortunately, I think so.

We are now enduring increasing retail and food service meat and poultry prices that has brought shouts of corporate greed from many quarters. I have written in this space before that I don’t agree that meat and poultry executives are greedily planning how to raise prices and margins to fatten their corporate coffers. I believe that it is more a function of a drought, coupled with higher wage costs when the companies can find employees to fully staff their plants, rising fuel costs forcing all long haul truckers to spend hundreds of dollars simply to fill their diesel tanks to move the grains to feedlots, cattle to processing plants and beef to consumer conduits like grocery stores.

Second, it is my belief that what we as a meat and poultry industry can do right now is offer help to the Ukrainian people with what we know how to do best — provide nutritious meat and poultry to stave off their incipient hunger we are witnessing. This is their time of need, and we as an industry can voluntarily step forward in a small yet meaningful way to help cure a problem. Sure, it may not dampen our society’s inflation, but it will help satiate those in dire need.

It’s the right thing to do.

“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nuthin’!”

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