Drive growth, protect the business and political climate for beef, grow trust and promote beef’s value are the key factors in the beef industry long-range plan, announced during the 2015 Cattle Industry Summer Conference in Denver last week. Sixteen beef industry leaders representing every link in the beef value chain have been developing a set of aggressive goals to strengthen the beef industry from 2016 to 2020 since December 2014.
The task force members agreed the single most important strategic objective the industry should pursue is increasing beef demand and established a specific objective to “increase the wholesale beef demand index by 2 percent annually over the next 5 years,” which will require resources be committed in 4 core strategies:

• Drive growth in beef exports, a strategy that focuses on gaining access to key markets and promoting the unique attributes of U.S. beef to foreign consumers.
• Protect and enhance the business and political climate for beef, which begins with motivating stakeholders to become more engaged in policy concerns to improve the industry’s effectiveness in managing political and regulatory issues that threaten the overall business climate of beef production, including assuring beef’s inclusion in dietary recommendations, exploration of new production technologies, crisis management planning, developing the next generation of beef industry stakeholders and other initiatives.
• Grow consumer trust in beef and beef production, including a critical focus on antibiotic stewardship, the implementation of a certification/verification program and continued investment in beef safety initiatives. The task force said the entire beef community must be engaged and collaborate with a broad group of industry partners to protect beef’s image.
• Promote and strengthen beef’s value proposition, a strategy designed to revolutionize beef marketing and merchandising; invest in research that allows the industry to communicate beef’s nutritional benefits; capitalize on media technologies to communicate beef’s value proposition; and respond to consumer-based market signals with product improvements and increased production efficiencies.

“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.”

Support for the long range planning process was provided through the Policy and Federation divisions of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. Guided by the plan, the Beef Board and Federation adapted their joint committee structure to better focus on plan recommendations to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of beef checkoff dollars where they can and should appropriately be invested.

For the complete Beef Industry Long Range Plan 2016-2020 report or the Summary, go to www.beefusa.org.

TSCRA members who served on the Beef Industry Long Range Task Force were Donnell Brown, R.A. Brown Ranch, and Molly McAdams, Ph.D., retail and food industry consultant