Members of the agriculture industry typically understand how food gets from farm to plate whether they are producers within the industry, know producers within the industry, or simply understand how the industry works. But that number is at a minority today.
Most consumers are generations away from any connection to production agriculture; they have no idea how an animal gets from farm to fork. Consequently, the beef industry, and the agriculture industry as a whole, is seeing a demand for traceability.
Consumers now want to know specifically where their food is coming from and what resources are going into producing the beef they purchase at the grocery store. But the problem isn’t that the beef industry wants to hide their production practices. The problem is implementing a system where this information can be recorded throughout an animal’s entire life span from cow-calf, to stocker, to feeder, to packer, and to retailer. This is the way consumer demand is moving so the beef industry must adapt our supply to meet demand.
China is ahead of the U.S. in traceability for beef products in supplying information on some products about slaughter date, breed, age, and country and/or farm of origin. Seeing that it can be done elsewhere, the beef industry needs to begin the process of implementing a similar system into U.S. beef production.
The solution to this is blockchain. By using radio frequency ID tags (EID), producers at each stage of production can upload information about where an animal or group of animals is bought or sold; its price; what it was fed; vaccines, implants, and other treatments it received; sex; breed; age; if it was sold on the spot or forward market; harvest date; and other information, as well.
The producer at each stage of production can enter this information, which follows the animal(s) throughout their entire life cycle through an online ledger connected to the EID tag. Then, this information can be connected to a barcode on the package that consumers can scan.
This point-of-purchase barcode could also link to informative articles about why that animal was raised a certain way. Transparency for beef production can be addressed by linking articles about hormone use, antibiotic use, grain vs. grass finishing, and any other aspect of beef production. Or, recipes can be linked to promote the purchasing and use of beef products.
It’s all just academics if you can’t pay for it. But, at a cost of $5/tag, this could easily be implemented on operations. The cost can be covered by a slight premium in price in the retail end, or it could be tied into the current checkoff program or create a similar program to cover the cost at sale for each stage of production to limit the financial risk for those involved in production.
But there are a few kinks with this solution. Blockchain can be used to record a plethora of different types of data, only some of which would be useful for a consumer. Feed intake and specific feed rations, type of vaccine or implant used, type of market used to sell the animals, and price they were sold at could be beneficial to producers and lend a hand in managing cattle health and efficiency as they move through the production cycle, but this information would be meaningless to consumers.
The information provided to consumers should be limited; otherwise it becomes a hindrance rather than a benefit. Age, sex, breed, harvest date, location(s) of production, vaccine/hormone usage, and finisher feed type (grass or grain finished) should be accessible to consumers at a level that will be comprehensible to them in terms of purchasing options.
In addition to traceability for consumers, blockchain could offer solutions for producers, assisting in making risk management decisions, disease management, and feed and feed efficiency management. It provides an entire background on a group of cattle, which enables them to make more educated decisions on how to manage each specific group, depending on their previous environment.
While this isn’t an end-all solution without any kinks, it lends to the beginning of a traceability program for the beef industry. Tests would need to be done on what information consumers find most important and if the premium price for these traceable beef products is worth the extra cost to consumers.
But blockchain offers a new technology to the beef industry to help further the development of the industry and offers a step toward providing consumers with the traceability of beef products they demand. — Olivia Willrett, Colorado State University student and overall winner of the 2019 CME scholarship
Beef students earn $1,500 scholarships from CME
Ten $1,500 scholarships for the next school year have been awarded by the National Cattlemen’s Foundation (NCF) to outstanding students pursuing careers in the beef industry. The scholarships are sponsored by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME).
Also receiving a trip to the 2019 Cattle Industry Convention and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Trade Show in New Orleans, LA, as the overall winner of the scholarship was Olivia Willrett of Illinois, who is a student at Colorado State University. Willrett wrote an essay for her scholarship entry titled, “Tracing Beef from Farm to Fork.”
The other nine students, each earning $1,500 CME scholarships from NCF, were:
• Katie Gardner, Arkansas, University of Arkansas;
• Ryan Beany, Florida, University of Florida;
• Grady Woodard, Kansas, Kansas State University;
• Lauren Mosher, Iowa, Iowa State University;
• Bailey Morrell, Colorado, Colorado State University;
• Sydni Lienemann, Nebraska, University of Nebraska-Lincoln;
• Shelby Souva, Michigan, Lansing Community College;
• Shaye Koester, North Dakota, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and
• Nolan Newman, Ohio, Ohio State University. — NCBA
