At the 2023 Cattle Industry Convention, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, caught up with the new chair of the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion Board, Jimmy Taylor. Hays and Taylor talk about the big three sectors of the Beef Checkoff: Research, Promotion, and Education.
Jimmy Taylor and his wife Tracy run a commercial Angus herd near Cheyenne, Oklahoma consisting of approximately 600 females on 12,000 acres.
“The beef industry is has been so good to my family and myself,” Taylor said. “It is a way I can give back and I just want to do everything I can to help the beef industry move forward and be profitable for people.”
Taylor said the upcoming Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner 300 at Daytona International Speedway is a great opportunity to promote the beef industry.
For the third year in a row Daytona International Speedway announced its partnership with Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner to sponsor the 42nd season-opening race for the NASCAR Xfinity Series – The Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner.® 300. The race is scheduled to kick off the season on Saturday, February 18 at Daytona International Speedway, the day before the 65th annual DAYTONA 500.
“That gives us great exposure to NASCAR fans, which traditionally are big beef eaters,” Taylor said. “To me, it is we try to promote and bring new people in that are not familiar with beef, but it is probably easier to increase the amount of beef that a person eats rather than introduce some new person.”
Beef councils from several states came together to make the Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner 300 come together, Taylor said, including the Oklahoma Beef Council.
Taylor said through digital advertisement, the younger generation has been reached and educated about the beef industry.
“We try to hit all types of media to reach every generation, and that digital- it seems to be the way that the younger people prefer to get theirs,” Taylor. “With that comes Ecommerce. That is a really good way, a new way, that we are marketing our product.”
On the research side, Taylor said a significant amount of nutritional research has been conducted comparing beef with plant-based products.
“Beef really comes out well in that research,” Taylor said. “We have got a long history of doing research, not only in nutrition, but safety.”
Regarding the education of consumers, Taylor said one project that Beef Checkoff dollars are being used towards is the Northeast Beef Promotion Initiative.
“You get up into the northeast where they have 72 million people, and there is 14 people for every cow,” Taylor said. “So, we take some of our dollars from Oklahoma and from Nebraska and states with high populations of cattle and send it up there to educate the people we are talking about- health care professionals to make recommendations to people they are seeing, nutritionist and consumers.”
When educating cattle producers about the value of the Beef Checkoff, Taylor said while one producer may not be able to stretch their dollar per head very far for promotion research and education, when those dollars from all producers are combined, a bigger difference can be made.
“We get a lot more bang for our buck and have a lot better programs than we could if everybody was trying to do something,” Taylor said.
