Over the last 22 years, Certified Angus Beef has awarded $418,500 in scholarships through the Colvin Scholarship Fund. While that number has had a positive influence on many students, this year held a few extra special moments for the fund: the addition of a third category to support more education paths; a record-breaking dollar amount awarded; and the highest donation support ever from partners at the 2022 Annual Conference.
Adapting Angus cattle to perform better, in tandem with the land, and create a better end product is a labor of love 33 years in the making for the Blythe family. Every year they’ve improved one breeding decision, management change, farm tour and conversation at a time.
For Manny and Corina Encinias’ family of nine, sustainability runs deep. They are stewards of a legacy, working the land dating back to 1777, when the first generation began herding sheep in the nearby Moriarty community. Today they focus on cows well suited to the harsh New Mexico desert, fostering community strength and creating opportunities for others to follow in their footsteps.
It’s a labor of love, obvious in the way she lights up explaining their family’s 33-year effort to proactively adapt Angus cows to their land. A lifetime of telling stories from the pasture or kitchen has resonated with nonfarm consumers as much as fellow ranchers. “Everything we do is about cattle, but it’s also about family and connecting our kids to the land and to the cattle,” Debbie Lyons-Blythe says.
Producing beef in the desert Southwest takes a certain resolve, faith that the rain will come and grit to do the hard things and smile through the work when it doesn’t. This is the grit engrained in Manny and Corina Encinias and their seven children operating Buffalo Creek Ranch. Their holistic approach earned this ranching family the 2022 CAB Sustainability Award.
Certified Angus Beef announced a collaboration with Ducks Unlimited in late 2021. Together, the two organizations assembled half a million dollars to launch the Working Grasslands Conservation Initiative, helping unlock an additional $2.5 million in grants to fund the initiatives’ work over the next three years.
Certified Angus Beef will award more than $50,000 in scholarships this year to students who are honing their interests through a variety of education options in the pursuit of a career in agriculture.
When every remembrance of a man produces similar reactions among former staff, friends and industry leaders alike, it’s a fitting tribute the person was who he said he was. Every time. Jim Riemann, CAB president from 1999 to 2006, was one of those men.
More than forty years after selling the first pound of branded beef on October 18, 1978, Certified Angus Beef continues to deliver for consumers and producers. The brand closed fiscal year 2021 with a few new records and another billion on the books.
Telling their story to the cattle curious was awkward at first for John and Gaye Pfeiffer. Their dedication to teaching and connecting with those further down the supply chain earned them the 2021 CAB Ambassador Award.
