Dive into the National Level
Welcome back to another week of Diving into the Dollar. This week, I went to sunny San Diego to attend the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Summer Meeting where the national checkoff board meets. I sat in on meetings, met producers from across the country and gained a deeper understanding of how the checkoff works at the national level.
At the state level, we have the beef council which decides where to spend the money. At the national level, they have Cattlemen's Beef Board (CBB) comprised of 101 producers from across the country. To be on CBB, members must be nominated by their state, vetted by the White House and appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture.
Another major difference is the CBB doesn't have staff that does promotion, education and research like the Minnesota Beef Council does. The CBB staff does administration work. Instead, different organizations present project ideas, and CBB divides up the funds to the various organizations called contractors.
I got to hear the CEO of Cattlemen's Beef Board speak about how the checkoff is working to promote beef.
I went to the Checkoff Update session where I heard from 12 contractors updating the board on their projects. They talked about a variety of topics from safety and product innovation to stakeholder engagement to international marketing.
The meetings allowed me to see how expansive the reach of the dollar can be.
Each contractor got up and presented a short update about how each project went over the past year. The next day, contractors presented to committees to get new projects approved.
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