Arkansas Producer Elected Chairman of Cattlemen’s Beef Board
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Today, cattle producer Tom Jones from Pottsville, Ark., is proud to join the ranks of many across the country chosen by fellow cattlemen and women to serve as Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) chairman. Elected during the 2011 Cattle Industry Annual Convention in Denver, Colo., Tom is no stranger to the cattle business.
Tom bought his first calf at the age of 12. As third generation on the farm, Tom has spent much of his time in the row crop business along with cattle, and his family also was in the poultry business with Tyson Foods for nine years. For the last few years, they have been more concentrated on the stocker segment of the industry, but with his Dad getting a little older and wanting to slow down, and a large portion of his own time being spent away from the farm, Tom decided to back off of the stocker business. They currently are transitioning back to cow-calf and hay production. In fact, he has spent this winter feeding a lot of other people’s cattle by selling hay, which has been in short supply in Arkansas.
Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural business from Arkansas Tech University with a minor in economics. After school, he went right back to the farm.
Tom has always been where the heart of the industry is: he is currently serving his 8th year on the board of the Arkansas Farm Bureau; his 2nd term as secretary/treasurer of the Arkansas Farm Bureau board; immediate past vice chairman of the CBB; spent five years on the local school board; serves on Arkansas Tech’s advisory board for the Department of Agriculture; served as President of Arkansas Tech’s alumni association; was appointed this year to serve on the American Farm Bureau beef advisory committee; was a member of the Arkansas Soybean Association for several years; and was privileged enough to be a part of enacting the national soybean checkoff which gives him a better perspective of the beef checkoff and the way he believes checkoffs should work for everyone’s benefit.
“I’m proud of the work the Beef Board has done to protect and enhance the checkoff,” Tom says. “The Beef Board is really the only group that can truly protect this worthwhile national checkoff program.”
Tom works 24/7 and still manages to squeeze in extra hours when he knows he has to be gone with his volunteer positions. And he’s the only one on the farm – there are no employees. So we asked Tom how he does it all. After all, he’s just one man.
“You do what you’ve got to do. I care about everybody. I don’t do things for me – I do them for my wife, my family, and the industry…I don’t think a lot about me,” Tom explains. “Has that cost me money in my career? Probably. But I do it because I care. No one makes me do this – I do it because I want to.
“And part of my passion and my care for the industry is also part of my problem – I’m very plain-spoken – but prefer people to shoot straight and do the right thing.”
Tom’s wife, Jayne, is the Vice President of Development at Arkansas Tech and they have two children, son Jayson, an Arkansas state trooper, and daughter Laura Katelyn, a junior at Kansas State University. Neither of his children desire to take over the family farm, but as proof of sharing his passion with others, a good friend of Tom’s would like to be in the cattle industry and he only hopes he can help him do that.
Tom begins his year as chairman with passion and conviction: “My goal without any equivocation is for people to have more than enough confidence in this checkoff so that when this industry makes a decision to make the checkoff better, producers will know it’s a valid program that they can support. As I’ve said, only the Beef Board, which works for everybody, can give producers assurance that their checkoff dollars are being spent wisely.
“We have to do a good enough job with the checkoff that the one thing that can’t be asked when the time comes to make improvements is, ‘Is it worth it?’”
For more information about your beef checkoff investment, visit MyBeefCheckoff.com.
The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA approval.
Funded by the Beef Checkoff.
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