Robert Mitchum Beef Its Whats for Dinner
And the Minnesota Beef Council works to keep it that way with a changing market of millennial consumers
Beef. It's what's for dinner.
We all know that thanks to the successful marketing campaign of 1992 that was funded by Beef Checkoff dollars and featured actor Robert Mitchum as the first narrator.
All these years later, beef is still what's for dinner. But now the slogan doubles as an address (beefitswhatsfordinner.com) loaded with recipes, nutritional information and a menu of health-conscious subjects like satisfying salads' and a 30-day protein challenge.'
Traditional images of beef have grown almost as outdated as public payphones or paper maps.
"We aren't focusing as much on the big ole' steak in the center of the plate," said Karin Schaefer, executive director of the Minnesota Beef Council. "We're talking more about how to use beef as an ingredient in a stir fry, on pizza, something quick and easy. We're trying to promote it more as part of a healthy balanced diet as an ingredient in various meals."
Schaefer visited Pipestone last month with officers of the 16-member Minnesota Beef Council board: Clarence Caraway, secretary, of Lake Benton; Jay Bakken, treasurer, of Garretson, S.D. (with a rural Minnesota address); and Mark Malacek, president, between Redwood Falls and Morgan.
The group talked about the Council's mission and the Beef Checkoff Program, how the industry is adapting to the changing demographics in the United States, and how the Beef Checkoff dollars are working for the approximate 18,000 beef, dairy and veal producers in the state of Minnesota.
Lunch at Lange's Caf followed, where the roast beef plate was the most popular dish of the day.
Where beef checkoff dollars come from
The National Beef Checkoff Program, created by the 1985 farm bill, levies $1 per head for each bovine that's sold in the beef, dairy and veal industry. State beef councils, like the Minnesota Beef Council, collect this dollar and pass half of it to the national Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board.
The other half remains with each state's beef council. The total beef checkoff dollars kept in Minnesota have ranged over the past 11 years from a low of $655,758 (2005-2006) to a high of $721,075 (2003-2004). The national share from all states, including remittances from states without state councils, has been in the $30-$40 million range since 1987.
"We have national efforts going on all the time advertising, education, promotion, research but then we also have this board of 16 producers in the state of Minnesota who help set the direction of priorities for our state," utilizing the .50 per head that the Council retains for Minnesota, Schaefer said.
Checkoff funded research
The National Beef Checkoff is the primary research vehicle for the industry, funding the development of university studies for beef product enhancement, including new cuts of beef, nutrition, beef safety and beef sustainability. The Minnesota Council also spends about 2 percent of its budget on research.
Council President Malacek said the beef research showed him that feeding vitamin E to cattle 100 days before harvest helped retain the meat's redness.
"Because of that funding, I get a $2 a hundred weight premium when I sell these cattle," Malacek said.
One study currently wrapping up with the University of Minnesota looks at the link between iron deficiency, particularly in young, college-aged women, and a link to depression.
"There's been some solid research that links those two," Schaefer said. "This study looked at what would happen if these young women utilized beef and tried to increase their iron and what effect that would have on mental health. We're excited to get that data. It sounded promising, but we haven't seen the final report yet."
The BQA
Beef industry statistics estimate there are more than 600,000 farms and ranches across the country that specialize in beef cattle, and none of those producers are required to raise their cattle the same. Nor could they, according to the Council officers.
"It's not like some other commodities, like pigs, they've gotten pigs pretty streamlined," Bakken said. "The genetic variation between pigs and dairy are really pretty narrow. With beef we're still a lot of independent people in different parts of the country and production systems. You can't raise the same steer in South Florida as you can in Montana. You just physically can't do it. So as a country, it's hard to make a blanket statement about beef."
That's where the Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program comes in, a checkoff-funded program that has existed for more than 25 years and provides guidelines for beef cattle production in an effort to improve quality in the beef and consistency in the beef product. The Beef Cattle Institute, housed at Kansas State University, is a third-party independent entity that developed and administers the online BQA certification program nationally.
Schaefer said 90 percent of the country's feedlot operators have been certified.
"I think we struggle as an industry to prove to consumers that we're doing the right thing," Schaefer said. "This is one measure where we can put some sort of standards in our industries and make sure we have good actors and are doing the right thing."
"And it is measurable and auditable," Bakken said. "There's the national beef quality audit that happens every five years. They take harvest facility data, as far as injection site lesions or antibiotic violations and the numbers are consistently falling. The violations keep going down. That's something you can measure and say we as producers are doing the right thing. And part of that is funded by the checkoff dollars."
Debunking myths
The mission of the Council is simple: to enhance opportunities for growth and success in the beef industry. What challenges the simplicity are the Council's various markets grain-finished, grass-finished, naturally raised or certified organic and how some of those markets try to gain an edge with an increasingly food conscious public. Marketers of non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) beef, for example, stress the non-GMO' side of its production, even though GMO foods have been in the American food supply since 1996, have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and have been shown through substantial scientific evidence to be safe for human and animal consumption.
"We are sometimes our own worst enemy," Schaefer said.
Debunking myths about beef is part of the Council's job. That means addressing consumer confusion or correcting misleading publicity, whether about food safety which can be anything from GMOs to antibiotic use to growth promotants to the humane and sustainable treatment of cattle.
[/caption] />
"That's what they're very, very concerned about as millennials," aged 18-24 who became, this year, the country's largest demographic, Schaefer said. "They have a call to social consciousness with what they're eating."
Shifting demographics and the millennial market
The Council has shifted its promotion dollars around 21 percent of its annual budget into social media or digital radio or interactive website features that seek to educate its newest consumers on what beef is, the health benefits of it, how to cook it and how to make it a staple in diets.
"You're at the grocery store and they have Denver steak on sale and you don't know what to do with it," Schaefer said. "You can search for that (on the Interactive Butcher of their newly designed website) and it will pull up recipes you can use the Denver cut for and the nutritional benefits."
The Council's new strategy began three years ago when Schaefer joined the Council as the executive director after doing leadership development and policy advocacy work for the Minnesota Farm Bureau. She grew up on a Hastings dairy farm and married the beef farmer she met in college. They now have a cattle operation in Howard Lake in Wright County.
"I have two young children and I work full time so I understand that convenience and wanting quick and easy and how to talk to that millennial mom who's shopping at 5 o'clock at night," Schaefer said.
The average beef producer is 58-years-old and is not going to see the Pandora digital radio spot that's intended for a college-aged female, or the cooking demonstration at the Minneapolis Farmers Market, or look up recipes on the Interactive Butcher. For that reason, the Council spends about 14 percent of its annual budget telling producers how their Minnesota checkoff dollars are being spent.
"We try to reach these people who aren't the people paying the money in," Bakken said. "So it's a challenge to try and get the people who are paying the money in to see what we are doing. We're not trying to preach to the choir, but you've still got to give them a sermon every once in awhile so they know what's going on."
From farm to plate
How the Council reaches millennials is different, as is what they're telling a generation that wants to know the entire production chain and what's been done to their food from farm to plate.
"A big concern for millennials is that we lock these cows up in a feedlot and stuff them full of corn and they get a whole bunch of antiobiotics and hormones," Schaefer said. "It's taking a step back and saying, no, no, no, no. This is how stereotypical cattle are raised in the United States: it's six months on grass with their mom. It goes into a backgrounder or stocker operation, which is traditionally a grass-based operation, lots of forages in that diet. And then transitioning them in that last four-to-five months where they don't just get stuffed with corn, they get TMR (total mixed ration), balanced ration."
If millennials are more skeptical about the business of agriculture, research shows they do trust farmers, Schaefer said. That's where the stories of board member-producers come in. Bakken, for example, runs Blac-X Farms with his brother. Blac-X Farms is a commercial cow/calf operation, a corn and soybean farm with some hay and small grains, and a feedlot operation about 10 miles west of Luverne.
"When people say, what do you do,' I'm proud to tell them what I do," Bakken said. "I believe in it. I can defend what I do. That's what's so hard about all these groups that want to say all these negative things about us: They're just flat not true. Come spend a day with me; come see how this really works."
"There's a good feeling when you bed down a pen of cattle and they're all laying down, they're comfortable for the night," said Malacek, who has a cattle feedlot and row crop operation between Redwood Falls and Morgan. "I often told our kids that have helped me bed, I wish some of the people from town can see what we just did. How comfortable they are; how much we care for our livestock."
Council Secretary Caraway, who is also president of the Minnesota Grazing Association and is in the registered red Angus business in Lake Benton, said his calling came from his father who had a feedlot in eastern Iowa where Caraway was raised.
"It's in my blood," said. "You just develop a passion for raising good livestock and good grass. I farmed because I had cattle, I didn't have cattle because I farmed. My passion was always with cattle."
SIDEBAR:
What's up with the price of beef?
Less livestock inventory + high export demand, industry officials say
Lean and extra lean ground beef will set a person back $6.19 per pound these days, today's national average.
"We've never seen these kinds of prices in the grocery story," said Karin Schaefer, executive director of the Minnesota Beef Council (MBC).
In the past, beef was so inexpensive that a lot of MBC's marketing efforts focused on moving the surplus off store shelves. Today, a smaller cattle inventory was further damaged by the record-setting drought in the U.S. south three years ago.
"Mother cows were going to kill one after another and once they're gone, they're gone," said Clarence Caraway, MBC secretary, of Lake Benton "It's not like the hog business where they have litters twice a year or chickens: it takes time."
The U.S. cattle inventory has slowly been rising both nationally and in Minnesota it was 89.9 million head nationally, up about a million over 2014, according to the National Agricultural Statistical Services, with about 2.33 million head in Minnesota in 2015, up 30,000 over 2014 but demand in the export market for beef is also higher and contributing to rising beef prices.
"U.S. beef is known around the world as being of high quality," Schaefer said. "As countries become more affluent, they demand meat protein so it's becoming that much more popular."
The U.S. sold $5.711 billion in beef exports in 2013, up from $3.839 billion in 2010. Japan is the biggest export market, followed by Canada, Mexico and South Korea.
Share with your Friends
Source: https://www.pipestonestar.com/articles/beef-its-still-whats-for-dinner/
0 Response to "Robert Mitchum Beef Its Whats for Dinner"
Post a Comment