Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays is talking with Andy Holloway about the 10th Annual Texas A&M AgriLife Hemphill County Beef Conference, which will be held on April 29-30 at the Jones Pavilion in Canadian, Texas.
Reputed to be one of the best standalone beef conferences in the United States, the Hemphill County Beef Conference is the brainchild of Holloway, Texas AgriLife Extension Agent.
Holloway started the conference in 2015, expecting attendance from Hemphill County and surrounding areas. He never expected his little county beef conference to become a national event.
“In 2015, I started with eighty-five people; we charged $100 per person for people to attend,” he shared. “I was told that nobody would pay $100 to come to an extension beef cattle meeting, but we had Minnie Lou Bradley as our keynote speaker, and we had critical issues and the right speakers to speak to those things, and we have carried on that tradition through all of these years.”
The tradeshow was incorporated in 2016, when the event was moved to the Jones Pavillion, and sixteen vendors showed up including two Corporate Sponsors. Last year, 2024, 850 people attended the conference from 26 states, and 110 tradeshow vendors rented booth space.
“It has really taken off in a lot of ways,” Holloway said. “We have some of the best educational information in the country. It rivals the NCBA Convention, the TSCRA Annual Convention, and other things like that right out here in the little ol’ town of Canadian, Texas, right in the middle of the prairie where the cow calf industry is king.”
He highlighted how the growth of the conference happened through word of mouth as people who previously attended shared their experiences with others. “We’ve been told over and over that they’ve never once been treated so kindly and hospitality is our king; we feed people good and we give them the best presentations that are available in the country,” he commented. “Then, we have some people tell us that they just like being with other ranchers just like they are.”
He described typical attendees as ranchers, cattlemen, and cowboys who raise and manage cattle for a living and as farmers who have cows. “Here in the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma panhandle, and all over this region, we have a lot of farmers,” he said. “With the decline of water that is in the Texas panhandle, the Ogallala Aquifer’s decline. People are looking at the cattle business more seriously than they ever have before.”
He detailed a new segment of interest from the dairy industry with dairy beef crosses. “We have a real diverse group of people at this conference, and they come because they are eager to learn the things that producers want to share with each other in the networking part,” Holloway shared. “There’s another component to our conference that is really special, and that is our tradeshow exhibitors.”
The Hemphill County Beef Conference’s trade show is unique because of the close connections that the vendors have with attendees. Networking opportunities, access to technology, and many more benefits spring from the closeness of vendors and attendees.
“There is a lot of business that gets done. There is a lot of advancement in knowledge, too,” Holloway listed. “Through our surveying over the years, we can say that over a hundred million dollars in added value over these ten years, based on anonymous surveys that ranchers fill out at the time of the conference, has been achieved. That’s something I’m really proud of because it really speaks to the value of the conference and why people attend.”
More information, the agenda, and tickets to attend can be found at hemphillcotxbeef.com.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR for today’s show, and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
