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Where is the backbone?I must tell you that last week's mid-year meeting of the Cattle Industry Associations was without question the worst agricultural meeting I have ever attended. To give you a feel for just what a political nightmare it was in case you were lucky enough to get to stay away from it, on Friday--as I do every Friday to say thank you to the United States troops for protecting my freedom--I wore a red shirt. This particular red shirt happened to say BEEF with a checkoff logo that I received for helping with the National Beef Ambassador contest. Several people actually made comments, and others gave me the look that said, "Oh, you have taken their side." Excuse me! The day someone tries to make you feel uncomfortable for wearing a beef shirt at a beef meeting is the day we need to stop and take a hard look at the corner we have backed ourselves into. Unless you live under a rock, I am sure you heard about the proceedings leading up to the mid-year in Denver. In a nutshell, the Executive Committee of the Cattlemen's Beef Board made a statement about parting ways with their primary contractor--the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. I will also tell you that by the end of the meeting, the one thing everyone was in complete agreement on was that we need to fix this and get back to the business of promoting beef. The United States food producers cannot afford dissension in the ranks. We have a mere 76,000 farm families that produce 80 percent of the food in this country, and it is vitally important that, though we have our differences, at the end of the day we can come together on the big issues and speak with a unified voice. I have studied this issue and listened to a lot of people, and I truly believe there is a problem on both sides of the equation. The problem is that the cattlemen--all volunteer leaders that make up the officer teams in both camps--are letting too many staffers run the show. I honestly believe that the current meltdown is the direct result of staff members, most of which came straight from an advertising agency, don't have a vested interest in the future of the beef industry. If it all falls apart, they can walk away and apply for another job. They aren't making their decisions based on what is in the best interest of a generations-old family farm or ranch. They are building their resumes, spending our hard-earned checkoff dollars and making a mockery of our industry. While key senior staffers are busy feeding only carefully selected information to beef producers in the leadership positions, one must look at the officers themselves and ask how they could let this happen? Why would NCBA officers not know that the entity that provides most of the funding for their organization (the CBB) had made a verbal request for accounting information? Simple. The staff involved are covering their hind sides. Some have gone so far as to leave the organization, perhaps because they could see the handwriting on the wall. Heads need to roll. For years I have been arguing with friends in the beef industry who have been telling me that NCBA is not the grassroots-driven organization it is supposed to be. The current situation has not given me much turf to protect. That doesn't mean that I don't believe it can't become the group it needs to be once this turmoil is resolved and the house is back in order. For part two of the drama, why did the CBB, working under the oversight of the USDA, choose to take the lack of communication public? Does the leadership not know that the current atmosphere in the USDA is targeted at destroying the beef industry from within? While that may sound bold, I can very much make that statement if you look at the current proposed Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration rule and a series of other actions taken by USDA in recent days. Can we afford to give them more ammunition to try to use against us? And while it may not have been the best approach, the move is doing what it was intended to do--right the wrongs that were being committed by staffers and swept under the rug. The whole meeting wasn't about throwing stones; Jude Capper, Ph.D., and Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., presented tremendous information in Denver about how modern beef production is sustainable and environmentally friendly. This is the kind of data we need to get out to the general public to squelch some of this negative rhetoric about our industry. Yet the New York Times writer who showed up for the convention ran a story entitled, "Audit Finds Problems in Cattlemen's Spending." Of course there was no mention about how modern beef production has improved the environment while improving human lives with food, fiber, pharmaceuticals and fuel we produce. This is exactly the kind of factual, optimistic data that our organization should be promoting! The good news at the end of the day is that the people who are really and truly involved in the cattle business are tough cowboys and cowgirls. When it is comes nut-cutting time, there is nobody I would rather have my back than my fellow cowboys. I do believe it is high noon for the volunteer leaders of CBB and NCBA to do just that--lead. Get inside the heads of those staff members and determine if they are for us or for themselves. If the cowboy way is what ultimately leads the way, I believe that our journey though rocky times will certainly be one that ends with tremendous success. This needs to be done for the good of every farm family that busts their butts from sunup to sundown to provide the things mankind needs to exist. Hell, USDA can't hold a candle to the cowboys if we all ride together! Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com.
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