Beef Matters - and Here’s Why
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Suggested Lead: Kim Brackett, a Cattlemen's Beef Board member and a cow-calf producer from Castleford, Idaho, is part owner and operator of Brackett Ranches. Also among her list of titles is mother and now blogger. Kim’s blog, entitled “Beef Matters”, is a glimpse into the working life on a cattle ranch. Kim is among many producers who are dedicated to telling their own story about modern beef production in an effort to help consumers understand where their food comes from.
As consumers become more disconnected from farm life, Kim feels it’s important to be active in sharing her story online.
Brackett 1: “The focus of my blog is to just kind of give a glimpse into everyday working life on a cattle ranch. I gear it toward consumers and try to just let them see, first of all, that we’re just everyday people like they are – you know – I’m a mom, I have four kids and I have to put dinner on the table every night. And also how it’s a family operation – my kids are out there, we’re cowboying together, we’re working together. And I try to get the message across in a not heavy-handed way that we care about our animals. I’ve put pictures of our newborn calves in the bathroom of my house and that we care about the land, that we’re good stewards, and just the day-to-day operations, how we do things.” (:37 seconds)
Kim tells us why it’s so important for the beef industry and individual producers to have a presence online.
Brackett 2: “It’s critically important. This upcoming generation, they refer to them as the millennials, that is how they get the vast majority of their information is through this new technology – smart phones, laptops, Internet. And to try to capture a little more of that, I stream my blog onto Facebook. And I do, I admit, I get more response, more followers, more comments on Facebook than I do on the blog itself.” (:21 seconds)
Kim says the checkoff plays an integral role in message development for her blog; and, she gives us a taste for what kinds of misinformation her blog attempts to dispel.
Brackett 3: “First of all, checkoff dollars pay for a lot of market research that help us gather this information – who is our audience, who are we trying to reach, what is the best way to reach them and then what is the message we need to bring forward to them. And actually, checkoff dollars do fund the technical part of my blog – they do the IT work and I am so very grateful for that. There are a lot of misconceptions. The ones that I have tried to dispel, first of all is nutrition. I put a lot of recipes on there and talk about lean beef. I have to admit I’m a bit of a health nut with myself and my kids and I think that comes across on the blog. Other ones are that we care for our animals and I talk through exactly when we’re working them in the corral and how we do it – our animal handling processes and also the stewards of the land – this is how we till our crops, this is how we harvest our crops and do our rotational grazing system.” (:46 seconds)
Visit Kim’s blog at www.BeefMatters.com. To learn more about your beef checkoff, 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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