[originaltext]INTERVIEWER: Cattle raising in the U.S. is big business, isn’t it

INTERVIEWER: Cattle raising in the U.S. is big business, isn’t it?
BECK: Yes, it’s the largest business.
INTERVIEWER: It must be a very profitable business then.
BECK: Uh... not necessarily.
INTERVIEWER: It’s not necessarily a profitable business?
BECK: At times, it’s not profitable. Your production costs get—It’s a supply and demand market, and if your supply is larger than your demand, why at times—
INTERVIEWER: So the price is fluctuating all the time.
BECK: Right. It fluctuates, and it can get below production costs.
INTERVIEWER: But you never know.... For instance, next year, you don’t know what it’ll bring on the market.
BECK: No, technically, it takes a year and a half from the time you breed the cow, until you get the calf, until the calf’s marketable.
INTERVIEWER: Dh-hmm...
BECK: You’ve got a year, to a year and a half, tied up there.
INTERVIEWER: So, you’re making an investment all the time.
BECK: Right. So you’re not sure.
INTERVIEWER: It sounds like it might be a very.., uh... insecure kind of existence. Wonder why it is that people want to be farmers or ranchers then.
BECK: I think the majority of it is you like it. It’s one thing... It’s a breed of people. They like it. If you don’t like what you’re doing, why...
INTERVIEWER: What is there about it? You live essentially in a rural place. Doesn’t that of isolation ever bother you ?
BECK: No. It’s getting too crowded.
INTERVIEWER: Too crowded? !
BECK: Too many people!
INTERVIEWER: I can see that, for instance, in a city, you have.., uh... restaurants to go to, movie theaters—all kinds of things available to people,... a lot of conveniences which you don’t have in the more rural areas. What to people who farm, ranch, do for recreation and relaxation, for instance...
BECK: Well. I think a lot of it is if you’re a livestock raiser, you.., you just.., you’ll go check your cows in the evening instead of going to a movie.
INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh...
BECK: That’s as much recreation as going--driving through a...
INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh...
BECK: ... bunch of cows, and if you like them, why, you.., you enjoy that.
INTERVIEWER: In terms of the way of life,... uh... to a lot of people, it would.., it would seem that it’s a very hard life. It means a lot of hard work. I mean, you have a schedule whether you feel like it or not, you have to get out and feed animals, and so forth. Would you regard that as one of the difficult things about it, or is that... ?
BECK: No... For me, if I had to go to a desk every morning, that’d kill me.
INTERVIEWER: Is there a problem of... uh... on the feeling of security?
BECK: What kind of security are you talking about—financial security?
INTERVIEWER: Uh... yeah, financial security.... Uh... the thing is up and down. You don’t know what the market’s going to bring for beef. You work all year, and so forth... uh... Is there any problem of that sort?
BECK: Sure, there’s the problem of security. Especially, if you’ve had one or two bad years. You feel awfully insecure.
INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh.
BECK: If you’ve borrowed money to buy a farm or to operate, and.., and there’s no money coming in, you feel awfully insecure.
INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh...
BECK: But you do always have... if... if you’ve got a fairly good amount of your ranch paid off, you’ve got that to fall back on. You always feel, you know, you can think of that as a security. If everything else fails, if you can’t pay for your operating expenses...
INTERVIEWER:  How do you handle uh... the whole family-life situation—children ? You’re out almost as much as... uh... as a working mother in the city, aren’t you ? BECK: Yes. The only difference is we’re together.
INTERVIEWER: That is,... the children too?
BECK: The children too.... When they’re not in school... When they were small they were with us—when they were very small, of course, I didn’t go out as much.
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that there are advantages in growing up in this way?
BECK: Yeah, I definitely feel that there’s.., there’s advantages. There are disadvantages too, but I think the... uh... the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
INTERVIEWER: What are some of those advantages you think the children have?
BECK: Well, they’re a lot more self-reliant. They learn to work. Uh... they learn responsibility. They learn a lot about life by being continually in life—uh... with animals—and I think it makes them... uh... They grow up!
INTERVIEWER: What do you think is the most difficult problem or the most difficult thing about ranching? Is it... this market--a marketing problem?
BECK: Yes. I think it is. I think we’re at the mercy of the buyer. We don’t set a price on whatever we have to sell. We go to the marketplace and say. "What will you give us for what we raise?"
INTERVIEWER: But doesn’t the government get into this? Are there any government subsidies on cattle?
BECK: No. Never has been.
INTERVIEWER: But there are subsidies on crops, aren’t there?
BECK: There was. There isn’t anymore. There’s a base price. Uh... ii the price goes below, then the government will make up the difference. But the price hasn’t been that low for a long time.
INTERVIEWER: How—
BECK: That’s a subsistence price.
INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about that? Do you think that’s a good thing to—or was it a good thing to...
BECK: The support price...?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah...
BECK: No. And I think that’s what’s wrong with the market—those kind of prices keeping a false market going.
INTERVIEWER: There’s not a natural sort of pricing of—
BECK: No. If there’s a surplus of wheat, we should stop raising wheat—instead of being paid not to raise wheat!