Bob Langert Defines the 3-P's of Sustainability: People, Planet, Profit

May 22, 2015

Consumers are in the driver’s seat when it comes to agricultural sustainability. For those that live and work on the land, ag producers struggle in understanding what consumers mean in using that term? Bob Langert of the Green Biz Group was one of the speakers at this week’s 2015 REBELation Conference put on by Alltech, an animal nutrition company. He formerly served as their vice president of sustainability for McDonald’s. In the beef breakout session, he discussed beef sustainability.

“It’s a very meaningful concept, the concept that beef is not only about assured supply and quality and performance,” Langert said. It’s also about treating animals well, treating the earth well and treating the people well.”

The whole sustainability movement is being driven forward by consumers. Langert said companies like McDonald’s are not doing this because they have activists on their doorstep, demanding sustainability but rather because consumers as a whole want this and they care about care about where their food comes from, what’s in it and how it’s processed. It’s a challenge that consumers have become skeptical of their food. He said agriculture can overcome that by being more transparent.

“All of us in the beef industry need to take charge, develop our own strategy and be way more proactive about telling our story,” Langert said.

Sustainability is also about doing a better job in measuring improvement by measuring that that on a day-by-day basis. He said these days you just can’t say you’re sustainable, you have to prove it because consumers want that verified and he believes agriculture will have to work on proving the values they have in their businesses.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.