Many of America’s cattle ranchers who are now taking over their families’ ranching operations do not remember when the Beef Checkoff program was enacted. That’s because it was enacted over four decades ago.
The Beef Checkoff was enacted in the wake of the 1980s agricultural recession, which was marked by an intense economic cost/price squeeze that forced many cattle producers out of business. Congress wanted to address that, and its plan was to establish a means of sustaining a viable U.S. cattle industry through producer-paid beef research and promotion.
The expectation was that with targeted beef research and promotion, consumers would eat more beef, which would increase demand for domestic cattle; and this would result in higher and less volatile cattle prices that would increase profitability for America’s cattle producers and sustain viable domestic cattle operations for generations. At the time, this seemed to be a good idea.
During the past four decades, cattle producers have paid somewhere around $3 billion in mandatory assessments to the Beef Checkoff program. And during this four-decade period, per-capita annual beef consumption decreased from 79 pounds retail weight in 1985 to 59 lbs. retail weight in 2024, a reduction of 20 lbs. per person over the life of the Beef Checkoff program.
Overall consumption increased during this period because the U.S. population grew significantly, increasing by over 100 million people. So even though individuals are now eating less beef, the growth in population far outpaced the decrease in per capita consumption, and overall beef consumption grew by 3.2 billion lbs.
Using the Beef Checkoff program’s conversion factor, in which 592 lbs. of beef is the equivalent of one head of cattle, that 3.2 billion lbs. of additional beef consumption should have incentivized the expansion of the U.S. cow herd by 5.4 million cows.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, the U.S. cow herd shrank by 7.5 million cows. If carcass weights had not increased as they have, then the loss of 7.5 million head when we should have added 5.4 million head means the U.S. cow herd is millions of head smaller than it should be to meet domestic consumption.
Even when you factor in the increased carcass weights we now have, which were about 170 lbs. heavier in 2024 than they were in 1985, that increased weight is less than one-third of the 592 lbs. the Beef Checkoff currently uses to calculate the live cattle equivalent of beef. So, if you add the carcass weight increase to the checkoff’s conversion formula, the domestic herd still should have expanded by 4 million head rather than shrink by 7.5 million head to meet America’s increased appetite for beef.
This means any way you cut it, the U.S. beef cow herd shrank millions of head more than it should have since the enactment of the Beef Checkoff program. Thus, during the four-decades-long operation of the Beef Checkoff program, the shrinkage of the U.S. cow herd, even with increased carcass weights, far outpaced the growth in consumption, which, again, occurred not because per capita beef consumption increased; but rather, because the growth in population outpaced the reduction in per capita consumption.
And the latest drought that brought our domestic cow herd to the lowest level in over seven decades cannot be blamed for the loss of 7.5 million cows since the checkoff’s enactment, as our domestic herd had already shrunk by 3.7 million cows by 2018.
The most favorable conclusion that can be drawn is that whatever good the Beef Checkoff did during the past 40 years was woefully inadequate to sustain America’s cattle producers, their cattle and America’s appetite for beef, all of which were stronger when the Beef Checkoff was first enacted than they are today.
And so we now have a choice: We can stay the course and keep paying into a mandatory program that has failed to meet our expectations and in which millions of dollars are deflected to cover administrative expenses; or we can pass the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act, or OFF Act, in the upcoming farm bill that will make substantial reforms to the Beef Checkoff program.
The OFF Act reforms include disallowing any agricultural lobbying organizations from receiving the hard-earned dollars the checkoff program collects from you, prohibiting conflicts of interest within the checkoff board, requiring the maintenance and publication of records, and requiring periodic audits to determine if the checkoff program is being operated in compliance with the law.
These are much-needed, common-sense reforms for a program that has not met its objective for over 40 years but continues to extract tens of millions of dollars from America’s hard-working cattle producers. — Bill Bullard, CEO of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, USA
2 Comments