Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking about Cattlemen’s Conference with the CEO of the American Angus Association, Mark McCully. The conference is taking place today and tomorrow at Oklahoma State University at the Totusek Arena.
McCully was asked to answer the question, “Why this conference,” to help kick off the meeting. Cattlemen’s Conference, McCully said, is an important meeting based on previous meetings that took place decades ago and helped shape the U.S. beef cattle industry.
Those past conferences were instrumental in helping ranchers become more aligned in goals regarding consumer and production targets.
“In that era, our industry wasn’t quite as transparent, and we didn’t have much information flowing up and down the chain,” McCully said. “Those were really important for cattlemen to get centered on the targets.”
Today, McCully said the industry has not focused on this type of conference in quite a while.
“Some of the purposes of what those early-type conferences are for is a little different, and yet I still think it is so important that we get together as breeders and industry stakeholders and share perspectives, talk about what is working, what maybe needs to get tweaked,” McCully said.
McCully quoted former head of the OSU Animal Science Department, Dr. Bob Totusek, from the 1988 conference when he told attendees 35 years ago the goal of that meeting was to separate “truth from the trend.”
With so many tools available for producers to accelerate production and genetic progress, McCully said one of the topics discussed at the conference will be how to effectively use these different tools.
“It is hard with all of the information overload if you will,” McCully said. “I think we probably deal with it in every part of our lives.”
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