The 2015 Cattle Industry Summer Conference was held in July in Denver, Colorado. At the Conference, the Beef Industry Long Range Plan Task Force, a group of sixteen leaders from all facets of the beef industry, shared their strategy to strengthen the beef industry over the next five years. The beef industry has faced enormous challenges in the past including droughts, record-high feed prices, record-low cow numbers and continuously increasing regulations. However, there has been a positive turn in the past few years. There has been an increased demand for domestic beef, cattle prices have increased significantly and the national cowherd is beginning to increase in size.
“While the beef industry has faced many challenges, the future holds tremendous promise for the industry,” according to Don Schiefelbein, owner/operator of Schiefelbein Farms and task force co-chair. “The task force took a research-based approach to not only determine where the industry is and how we got here, but also at the trends and issues potentially impacting the beef community so that we can be most successful moving forward.”
The task force defined the mission of the U.S. beef industry as, “a beef community dedicated to growing beef demand by producing and marketing the safest, healthiest, most delicious beef that satisfies the desires of an increasing global population while responsibly managing our livestock and natural resources.”
The United States is currently the leading producer of beef in the world, producing about 19% of the world’s beef followed by Brazil and the European Union. According to Beef2Live website the United States generates nearly $68 billion in cash receipts for cattle. Fifteen states including Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Colorado, Oklahoma, California, South Dakota, Missouri, New Mexico, Minnesota, Idaho, Wisconsin, Montana & Wyoming, generated more than $1 billion in cash receipts for cattle.
The Task Force is hoping to take advantage of the recent momentum in order to reach their goal of “increasing the wholesale beef demand index by 2 percent annually over the next five years”. The four core strategies established by the Task Force that need to be followed in order to achieve the goal include drive growth in beef exports, protect and enhance the business and political climate for beef, grow consumer trust in beef and beef production, and finally, promote and strengthen beef’s value proposition.
“The overall vision of our Task Force has been straightforward,” said John Butler, CEO of Beef Marketing Group, a task force co-chair. “Recognizing the growing demand among the world’s middle class for high-quality protein, we want the U.S. beef industry to responsibly produce the most trusted and preferred protein in the world. At this pivotal point in the U.S. beef industry’s history we need to focus our energies and limited resources on those areas that can provide our industry the best results.”
To read the full report please visit: http://www.beefusa.org/.