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| The Arizona Cattle Feeders' Association - History | |||||||||||||
| The Arizona Cattle Feeders' Association (ACFA) was founded on January 27th, 1934, at the Adams Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. It started with a group of cattle feeders clustered around the entrance to the Hotel on one mid-December day in 1933. The original founders were bewildered by the economic and political turmoil the country was in, when someone suggested that the formation of a cattle feeders' organization might be useful. Their foresight continues today. By October of 1934, the Association was a growing concern. Their bank account stood at $1,734, this at a time when the whole country was reeling under the first impacts of the "New Deal," which had started out with closing all the banks for four days in early 1933, repeal of the Volstead Act, going off the gold standard, passage of a Farm Relief Bill (which included the Recovery Administration by which they were awarded "Blue Eagle pennants"), and an announced federal deficit of $7 billion. The government undertook the slaughter of over one million head of livestock, and in May 1934 a dust cloud a mile wide suddenly carried off 300 million tons of Midwest topsoil across 1,500 miles of land into the Atlantic. Over the years the economic impact of the feeding industry on Arizona's economy has fluctuated. Beginning with a capacity of 40,000 head it grew to 700,000 head and, in 2006, we finished 416,000 head of cattle in Arizona's feed yards. |
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