The Oklahoma Beef Council is one of several state beef councils that allocates extra resources to the US Meat Export Federation. OBC Executive Director Heather Buckmaster tells Farm Director Ron Hays, ‘it really pays off.’
“When you look at Oklahoma, we have 3.875 million consumers in the state of Oklahoma and 96 percent of the world’s population lives outside of the US,” Buckmaster said. “We represent 1.2 percent of the US population so we want to make sure we’re making the most difference, so we made the choice to invest with USMEF.”
According to Buckmaster, each dollar contributed is matched three to four times, effectively extending that original dollar amount, enabling participants to support a variety of promotional events. Buckmaster reports that the success of some of the promotions OBC has participated in has prompted foreign host retailers to replace current beef programs with US beef inventory.
“It’s all going to be US beef,” Buckmaster said, “which should increase the volume of US beef purchases into next year by 70 percent.