The Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board will invest about $38 million into programs of beef promotion, research, consumer information, industry information, foreign marketing and producer communications during fiscal 2018, subject to USDA approval.
In action at the end of its September 12-13 meeting in Denver, the Operating Committee approved checkoff funding for a total of 14 “Authorization Requests” - or proposals - brought by seven contractors for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2017. The committee, which includes 10 producers from the Beef Board and 10 members from the Federation of State Beef Councils, also recommended full Beef Board approval of a budget amendment to reflect the split of funding between budget categories affected by their decisions.
The seven contractors had brought a total of $45 million worth of funding requests to the Operating Committee this week, $7 million more than what was available from the CBB budget.
“We showed up Tuesday morning ready to roll our sleeves up and get to work. We knew that we were going to have to make cuts of about $7 million,” said Beef Board Chairman Brett Morris, a cattle producer from Oklahoma.
“They are all good programs, and we hate for any of them to get cut, but with the amount of resources we had to work with, we had to make cuts,” Morris said. “I think the whole committee came through in agreement. Bottom line, we had a great task to accomplish, and we got there. I think the beef industry is in good shape because of it.”
In the end, the Operating Committee approved proposals from seven national beef organizations for funding through the FY 18 Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board budget, as follows:
- National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (five proposals for $27.3 million)
- U.S. Meat Export Federation, a subcontractor to NCBA (one proposal for $7.4 million)
- North American Meat Institute (four proposals for $1.35 million)
- Cattlemen’s Beef Board (one proposal for $1.1 million)
- American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture (one proposal for $435,131)
- Meat Import Council of America (one proposal for $366,000)
- National Livestock Producers Association (one proposal for $53,150)
Broken out by budget component, the Fiscal Year 2018 Plan of Work for the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board budget includes:
- $10.1 million for promotion programs, including continuation of the checkoff’s consumer digital advertising program, as well as veal promotion
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