The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) released their 2021-2025 Beef Industry Long Range Plan (LRP) at the NCBA Cattle Industry Summer Business meeting late last month.
The plan is updated every five years, identifying key areas to promote beef demand and the “long-term prosperity of the U.S. beef industry by sustainably producing the most trusted, highest quality and consistently satisfying protein for consumers around the world.”
“We want beef to be the protein of choice, and we want the entire U.S. beef industry to be trusted and respected for its commitment to quality, safety and sustainability,” task force leader and Idaho cow-calf rancher Kim Brackett said in a statement. “The task force invested many hours, discussing the current state of the industry and what we need to accomplish over the next five years. We feel we’ve established some important priorities and strategies, as well as benchmarks for success that will help keep our industry on track through 2025 and beyond.”
To meet the vision of beef as the protein of choice, the 2021-2025 Beef Industry Long Range Plan states the following objectives:
• Grow global demand for U.S. beef by promoting beef’s health and nutritional benefits, satisfying flavor and unparalleled safety;
• Improve industry-wide profitability by expanding processing capacity and developing improved value-capture models;
• Intensify efforts in researching, improving and communicating U.S. beef industry sustainability; and
• Make traceability a reality in the U.S. beef industry.
“We’ll measure the plan’s success by tracking key metrics for each core strategy,” Brackett said. “For example, one of the measures for the core strategy to ‘drive growth in beef exports’ will be to grow the value of U.S. beef exports as a percent of total beef value to 21 percent by 2025. Additionally, there are a number of other goals to help measure success specific to the other core strategies.”
The core strategies and goals in the LRP are:
• Drive growth in beef exports to 17 percent of U.S. production by 2025 and grow the value of U.S. beef exports as a percent of total beef value to 21 percent by 2025. By 2025, 75 percent of all cattle producing states participate in a nationwide animal disease traceability program (e.g., U.S. Cattle Trace);
• Grow consumer trust in beef production by increasing the Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program by 10 percent per year and achieve a national standardization of the BQA program by 2023;
• Develop and implement better business models to improve price discovery and value distribution across all segments. To accomplish this strategy, NCBA stated it wants to grow packing capacity by 7 percent by 2025 and “identify and develop margin analysis indices that measure and track margin distributions to increase understanding of distributions from the cow-calf through the packing sectors”;
• Promote and capitalize on the multiple advantages of beef by achieving a wholesale beef index of 124 by 2025 and narrow the perception gap between beef and chicken as measured by the checkoff-funded beef tracker;
• Improve the business and political climate for beef with the goal of 75 percent of producers in agreeing the beef industry effectively addresses opportunities that enhance the business climate for beef. By 2025, 25 percent of cow-calf producers have a grazing management plan; and
• Safeguard and cultivate investment in beef industry research, marketing and innovation by increasing program funding for beef marketing and promotion to $100 million by 2025. Quantify the existing public research funding for beef industry production issues, grow it by 25 percent and preserve the current Beef Checkoff program.
How the industry uses the plan
The LRP Task Force encourages other beef industry businesses and organizations to utilize the plan for their strategic decision-making processes as their guidebook.
The LRP is developed every three to five years by representatives from various segments of the industry based on the research of consumer trends and market forecasts by segment. The LRP disseminates the goals of promotion, research, information, and foreign-market development programs appropriate for checkoff funding and analyzes progress towards the goals. The LRP Advisory Group reviews annually to ensure checkoff programs stay on track and make meaningful progress toward the purposes of the LRP.
For more information about the LRP, please visit beeflongrangeplan.com. — Charles Wallace, WLJ editor
