Connealy helps keep CAB wheels rolling

by Chelsea Dinterman

September 20, 2015

Fifth-generation Nebraska rancher Jerry Connealy brings a lifetime of experience to his role as chairman of the Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) board of directors.

Growing up on the Sandhills ranch near Whitman that his great-great-grandfather homesteaded, Connealy took classes to learn how to artificially inseminate (AI) cows before he learned to drive. He watched his father purchase their first Angus cattle and slowly helped him build their registered herd.

He came back to the ranch in the 1970s with his animal science degree from the University of Nebraska and focused more attention on the Angus herd.

“Since then, I’ve grown the numbers significantly,” he says.

A supporter of the Certified Angus Beef ^® brand in general since its inception in 1978, Connealy decided five years ago to run and was elected to serve on the board. It was an educational as well as leadership experience, he says.

“In 2014, I made a trip to Wooster (Ohio) and really delved into the inner workings of what CAB was and its pull-through effect in the market,” Connealy says. “It wasn’t really until then that I realized how big it was and how impactful it was on my business and on my customers’ business.”

Last November, Connealy was elected board chairman for a year.

“I was honored to be chosen,” he says. “My expectations for the year were high because I was aware of how supportive the team has been, but those expectations have been more than met.”

To hear him tell it, the rancher simply presides over meetings, confers with CAB President John Stika and “acts as a cheerleader” for the brand.

“The leadership team at CAB is more than capable without me,” Connealy says. “In this position, and as a seedstock producer, I do everything I can to allow CAB to grow.”

To hear Stika tell it, Connealy has continuously pushed the brand to focus on the future, challenging leaders to keep innovation in their approach.

“Jerry is a firm believer that there is always room for improvement,” Stika says. “His forward-looking leadership exemplifies the phrase, ‘don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today’.”

“The brand has benefited from his support to foster a healthy sense of urgency,” he adds. That means identifying, vetting and then pursuing any opportunities that can better position CAB “for continued success to deliver greater benefit to registered Angus breeders.”

Connealy typically takes little credit but shares excitement about progress the brand has made during his term.

“It has been a privilege to work with the team and see the inner workings at CAB,” he says. “Acceptance rates for the brand have been at an all-time high and product continues to move out the door. Those are the things that make me smile.”

The rancher doesn’t see an end to growth.

“The sky is the limit,” he says. “We’re going to continue to set records and grow, and tap into those future customers who don’t yet know about CAB. I see the brand as a huge wheel that struggled to get turning, but now that it is turning, it’s going to be hard to stop.”

When his term ends in November, Connealy will keep translating his years of board experience to active support on his family ranch.

“I’m going to put the pressure on high marbling genetics,” he says. “And I’ll be educating my producer customers with what that means, because driving commercial operations toward quality makes us all profitable.”

Live and learn

by Miranda Reiman

I see all kinds.

In my travels across the country I visit many ranches that have been in the same family for a century or at least several decades. I always enjoy hearing what prior generations of cattlemen have passed on to the current stewards.

Challenging times usually teach many lessons, so there’s tried-and-true advice and even a few old wives’ tales thrown in for good measure.

When it comes to a producer’s method of teaching, there are all kinds, too.

There are the moms and dads who carefully show the steps in a process and explain why they’re doing it.

The “hang on and follow along” types instruct by doing. We’ll call them the role models. For that group, “watch this” makes more of an impact than any dissertation on the goals for the day.

Although I don’t witness a lot of hollering on a story trip, I do hear a few tales told in laughter later about the tense moments. For some, teaching comes fast and loud.

There are the “figure it out for yourself” types who think giving an impressionable mind a problem to solve will solidify learning.

It seems many producers can fit any of those classifications, depending on the scenario.

Sometimes even the most patient find they don’t always have the luxury of explanation. If there’s a laboring mama-to-be that needs help, they switch to “do as I do” mode. Between hurried, breathless commands and head nods, the student learns.

My moments of “figure it out” were usually based on necessity. Growing up, I remember the first time the Bobcat wouldn’t start for afternoon chores and no one with more experience than I was around the farmyard just then. I thought I’d seen that battery charger used to jumpstart it before. I assessed the situation and did what seemed logical.

Today, I’d Google such a predicament. Both are chances to learn by problem solving.

There are all kinds. And no kind of teaching is the wrong kind…unless you’ve got people who need to learn and you’re not teaching them anything at all.

Sadly, I see that, too. There was that time I asked a middle-aged rancher about his breeding decisions, and he urged me to talk to his elderly dad, because “he buys all the bulls.” Or when I talk marketing strategy and they say, “Oh, mom handles all that. I really don’t know.”

I love it when everybody has their own area of expertise and can contribute to a farm or ranch business, but I also think it’s important to step back and make sure you’re imparting that knowledge to the generation that’s going to take the reins someday.

If you’ve got breeding goals, talk about it together or take that daughter or son along to the bull sale so they see you in action. Give them a sale book and some expected-progeny-difference targets, and have them circle their favorites.

As you run cattle through the chute and sort for phenotype, note the reasons one female is a keep and another is cull. Ask for their opinions.

If you’re trying to hit a certain marketing window or want to score repeat business, get them involved in making plans. If you’ve set your herd up to be super maternal or high grading (or hopefully both), this is your chance to see that legacy continue.

Because someday all of your life’s work will likely be in the hands of that generation.

Much of their fledgling or flying success will depend on how good you were as a teacher.

Next time in Black Ink^®, Nicole Erceg will discuss what you can’t do with an empty cup.

Beef that keeps them coming back

Learning and teaching in parking lots

by Morgan Marley

The mirage above the grills and sizzle in the skillets say they’re hot. People bustle between cooking stations on the blacktop and soon, the savory aroma of cooking meat fills the air. Palm trees sway in the breeze.

Ah, the sights, sounds and smells of “meat clerk” training. For three days, nearly 250 meat clerks from scores of large supermarkets hone their cooking skills at summertime events like these across the country, all to better advise shoppers.

This isn’t what you think of when the Certified Angus Beef ^® (CAB^®) brand comes to mind, but it’s all part of the win-win relationships CAB forges with partners.

You might get your beef from a home-raised steer or buy retail cuts like most consumers. But if you raise beef cattle, you have to appreciate the expertise it takes for meat department clerks in cities to accurately represent the premium product that starts on your farm or ranch.

Retail meat staff are your sales force, the first resource shoppers approach when they have a question. Supermarket executives know their stores only succeed if customer-facing employees like meat clerks are ready to answer those questions.

Training puts ownership and responsibility in their job and builds a connection to every brand in the case.

“It goes back to that trust and really making a connection with the customer,” as one manager explains.

Meat clerks are the retail staff handling the product after it’s broken down by a meat cutter.

“They might be the one to put it in a tray, over wrap it, put the weigh scale on it and get it out into the front of the store or in the storeroom,” says CAB senior brand manager Barb Burd.

One training in August started with a CAB presentation, followed by a “vendor room” session with 28 brands giving meat clerks a chance to ask questions and sample the different products. That led to hands-on cooking demonstrations.

For three days, the CAB team worked with 20 groups a day for 25 minutes each to teach them how to sear and grill a New York strip steak.

“We may think of neighborhoods with people living in apartments where they can’t grill,” Burd says. But there are many different home cooking resources and, “We want all customers to be able to prepare a great dining experience at home with a great product and do it successfully.”

Searing and grilling classes have been favorite sessions for many clerks, learning from CAB Corporate Chef Peter Rosenberg and taking home much of what they grill. It’s all part of learning by doing, so they can walk customers through the preparation and cooking process. That creates a trust relationship with customers and keeps them coming back for more.

Training sessions may include several other stations and other brands of meat and seafood, all to help retailers distinguish themselves in the marketplace.

That makes for sustainable growth, retail partners say. Those who participate in such training set themselves a step above competition with an unbranded commodity base. CAB is the brand that fosters understanding at every step from pasture to plate.

Premiums earned at the farm and ranch level support the genetics and management that keep supplying the brand. CAB staff work to help build the base for those premiums, educating all hands and minds along the chain, from chef to retailer, rancher to meat clerk.

Because once people get a taste, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Beef State senior interns with CAB

by Natalie Jones

Fifth generation on her family’s 120-year-old Diamond Bar Ranch near Stapleton, Nebraska, Natalie Jones joined the Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) producer communications team this fall as an intern.

“Besides her writing skills, Natalie brings an insider’s perspective on Sandhills cattle ranching, from health to genetics and grazing management,” says Director of Producer Communications Miranda Reiman. The internship fits into Jones’ last semester at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she’s completing her bachelor’s degree in agricultural and environmental sciences communication with a minor in the Nebraska Beef Industry Scholars Program.

Working from the Beef State, Jones helps the CAB team across the country craft stories about outstanding Angus producers and inform audiences through technical articles, features, news releases, video scripts and social media.

“I come from a place where cattle are king, so I know the value in ‘Targeting the Brand’ through sire selection and herd management,” she says. “People work hard to make their living in livestock, so I hope to help point out ways to add value to their cattle.

Jones formerly interned with Superior Livestock Auction in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up showing livestock in 4-H. A member of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow, she also served UNL student government as a senator for the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.

Her ties to the industry come from a lifetime of working in it. Some of her favorite memories are working cattle with her parents Robert and Susanne Jones and siblings Shaylee, Grant and Lance.

Jerry Bohn to receive FQF Industry Achievement Award

by Miranda Reiman

When the opportunity knocked the first time, cattle feeder Jerry Bohn said “no.”

“I turned the Pratt job down once, before we made the decision to come here,” he says. With a young family and a career at CattleFax, “it was a hard move.”

“When I first came, we thought we’d be here five or six years and then go on somewhere else,” he says.

But after 34 years at the helm, it’s hard to separate Jerry Bohn from Pratt Feeders. Both are known for being reliable and consistent.

“You don’t run a business for practice, so obviously making a profit and doing it right was important for us,” he says. “That allowed us to be successful because we did focus on doing things the right way, being honest and having integrity. We did what we said we’d do.”

For his leadership to the beef industry and dedication to raising quality cattle, Bohn will receive the 2019 Feeding Quality Forum (FQF) Industry Achievement Award later this month. The honor will be given at a special dinner during the conference, slated for Aug. 27 to 28 in Amarillo, Texas.

Past recipients selected Bohn for the Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB)-sponsored award.

“Being recognized by your peers is the ultimate compliment,” he says.

During his tenure at Pratt Feeders, it grew from one yard operating at half capacity to as many as four, with an Oklahoma yard at Buffalo and other Kansas locations at Ashland and Hays (sold in 2014), with close to 120,000-head total capacity.

In 1980, local businessmen purchased the yard, but when Jerry brought his wife Julie and their young family to Pratt a few years later, he took immediate ownership in its success. Since then he’s literally bought into the company, serving on its board now with some second-generation stockholders.

“I don’t miss the day-to-day headaches, the weather and the markets dropping out,” Bohn says. “I do really miss the interaction with the customers.

“It’s a relationship business,” Bohn says. “It takes a pretty big trust for someone to put a load of cattle, that’s worth $40-, $50-, $60,000 on the road, send them to people you might not have met and trust that they’re going to take care of them.”

Bohn’s name was on the line, but everybody from pen rider to trucker to office clerk played a role.

“It takes a team to run an operation like this,” Bohn says.

The company was an early member of U.S. Premium Beef (USPB) and became a partner in the long-running CAB Feedlot Licensing Program in the early 2000s.

“It caused us to do a paradigm shift a little bit, with more focus on quality, and we became more active in looking for ranch cattle, particularly Angus,” Bohn says. “It was something that we needed to do to change our direction.”

The industry is catching up, but Bohn set that in motion at Pratt nearly 20 years ago.

“Over time, working with Jerry personally and with the other managers in the Pratt group I really gained an appreciation for his analytical style and approach to business,” says Paul Dykstra, beef cattle specialist for the brand, remembering many meetings spent poring over data in the Pratt boardroom. “Together we measured the progression of carcass quality in the cattle they were feeding. As the industry embraced carcass quality and what that meant for the economics of cattle marketing, Jerry was on top of that, finding better and better cattle.”

The feeding company implemented individual animal management early on. Pens are still sorted into three or four outcome groups, each one marketed at an optimum finish.

“Today almost everything we sell is based on a grid,” Bohn says. “There’s a risk ratio when you get paid for actually what you have, and sometimes people didn’t really want to find out what they had. More of them are becoming comfortable with that and it’s a way that we can supply more quality to our end user to keep them coming back.”

Doing right for the cattle, the customer and the bottom line—it seems to come natural, but it wasn’t a mapped career path for the farm boy from Wabaunsee County, Kansas. He grew up baling hay, raising pigs, cattle and corn.

That led him to earn an animal science degree from Kansas State University, where he also met Julie. They’ll celebrate 47 years of marriage this fall.

“She’s been so supportive,” Bohn says.

They have three grown children and five grandchildren. He’s a retired lieutenant colonel, after serving for 21 years in the National Guard.

“My goal is to leave a legacy, not only for my family but also with my involvement in the industry,” Bohn says. “You owe it to the industry you’re involved in to work with it and promote it and be involved.”

He’s served as Kansas Livestock Association president and volunteered with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which put him on track to become president there in 2021.

“I hope I’m known as someone who keeps his word and does what I say I’m going to do,” Bohn says.

Watch Jerry’s award video to learn more about his tenure in the beef industry.

BLI: An Original Experience

I’ve only been with the Certified Angus Beef^® (CAB^®) brand since May 1, learning more about beef and cattle in three months than in my entire life growing up on a Texas farm and showing stock.

Past experience showed me enough to get where food comes from, but not enough to understand how it gets from point A to B and then to me. Now I get the beef story, and a huge part of the credit goes to the week I spent with the American Angus Association’s Beef Leaders Institute (BLI) in June.

There are many, many reasons why I loved BLI. Here’s my top three.

1. Packing Plant Tour

Tyson Dakota City was unforgettable. BLI rotates to different plants but there’s always a major packing tour. After basic instructions and strapping on coats, hardhats, glasses and audio gear to hear above loud machine noise, we stepped out onto a catwalk overlooking the fabrication floor.

Rows upon rows of people with knives were gradually slimming down primals into subprimals, then individual cuts to boxes for shipping off to restaurants, grocery stores or wherever demand might take it.

We followed along into the grading cooler (for food safety, tours always move backward through the plant) where USDA inspectors were railing off carcasses by grades like Select, Choice and Prime. Of course, we saw those from Choice and Prime accepted for CAB. We also saw the relatively new grading cameras work automatically while still allowing human graders to override.

The first step and yet final, incredible, piece of the tour was the harvest floor. We saw carcasses lifted, dehided, eviscerated and halved. So much was going on at once, I didn’t know what to look at but tried to take it all in and more than once I took a step back and stared in awe. As we boarded our plane from Omaha to Cleveland, all I could think was I’m going to want to see and appreciate that again.

2. Brand Headquarters

I might be a little biased, but the things we went over here during BLI would not have occurred to me otherwise for many more months or even years. This was tailor made for BLI, starting with the incredible food CAB chefs prepared—all worthy of some 5-star skyscraper deck restaurant.

Our in-house meat scientist Diana Clark, full of puns, quick wit and sharp knives, taught us how to fabricate (break down) a sirloin subprimal into steaks and tri-tip roasts. Then we were handed the knives and got to work ourselves! I quickly realized watching someone here or from the Tyson catwalk is an entirely different experience from doing it yourself.

What was most fascinating, however, was the “Taste the Difference” presentation. Most of the BLI group normally ate from their own freezer; I grew up on my family’s Limousin beef. We had never tasted the difference between Select, Choice and CAB Prime. So after all the numbers were displayed and the producers knew CAB brought them a premium, it was time to actually taste the difference. And boy, there was a difference! We tried grass-finished, Select, CAB traditional wet-aged, CAB Prime and CAB dry-aged. I could explain some of the differences to you, but really, you need to taste it for yourself at the CAB Culinary Center.

3. The People

At BLI’s first night, CAB production brand manager Kara Lee said by the end of the week, we’d be putting each other on our Christmas card lists. I saw a few weird glances from unfamiliar faces then, but of course Kara would be right.

We came from around the country—South Dakota, Arizona, Kentucky, Montana and everywhere in between—I can’t think of another opportunity to learn from such a diverse group with a common passion. And while everyone had a herd of some size, some also worked at other ag jobs, from the Oklahoma Youth Expo to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and more. We each had stories to tell, and we shared those while learning from each other.

As we did all that, we were having a grand time. Talking on the bus in between locations rarely stopped. Friendships were formed, laughs were had and refreshments shared between stories. At the end of the week, no one truly wanted to say goodbye. It was more like, “I’ll see you soon.” So while this trip was an incredible way to learn the ins and outs of beef production and distribution, I will argue that the best part was the people we spent it with.

Talk to you soon,

Abbie

About the author: Abbie Burnett

I grew up among the cotton fields of Texas, loving God, my family and a camera in hand. As a 2018 graduate from Texas Tech, I jumped at the chance to be a CAB storyteller because I know it’s the farmers and ranchers who have the greatest stories to tell. I look forward to meeting you and telling your story while snapping a few (OK, maybe a lot) of sunset pictures along the way!

‘Plum’ good beef

by Kylee Kohls

Chef Brett Sawyer wasn’t going to serve beef in his restaurant – it was too expensive, and he didn’t want to compete with other Cleveland steakhouses.

Walking into the establishment, you wouldn’t expect to find a steak on the menu, let alone beef navel as a signature dish.

The sleek, black façade meets rustic brick to match the rest of the block. Large oak doors with shimmering, gold letters on the window pane read “The Plum.”

Inside, it’s white subway tiles and exposed red brick with green and yellow floral wallpaper. A vintage pinball machine sits in the corner. Two eight-point bucks are mounted on the dining room fireplace, while freshly cut flowers adorn each glistening, white table.

Open and airy, the food has been described as “whimsical.”

Cooking began out of necessity and turned into a passion for Sawyer. Today, he is the owner and chef of two Cleveland restaurants, The Plum and Good Company, where he focuses on reasonably priced foods with a flair.

“We want you to have a casual experience where we introduce you, without being pushy, to new things,” the chef says.

“We like to take stuff like the navel that people maybe don’t get every day or don’t use all the time at home and introduce them to it, or let them know they can come here and get it.”

Unparalleled experience

Cool might begin to describe the chef. His easygoing, laidback style meets you at the door in jeans, t-shirt and backwards baseball cap.

After trying regular college, but never culinary school, Sawyer found himself still a teenager learning in the restaurant business, serving, then bartending, eventually moving to the back of the house to help prepare food.

“Once I realized I wasn’t going to continue going to school, and how much I enjoyed cooking and being in restaurants, it just kind of fit,” he says.

Sawyer’s still in the business 19 years later, cooking for 11 of those years. Growing up in northeast Ohio, his father was an avid hunter and the cook of the family; his mother’s side hails from Kentucky.

He integrates all that with a passion for meat, the Southern home cooking he was raised on and his own unnameable style in the kitchens of The Plum and Good Company.

“I just cook what I want to cook,” Sawyer says. “I love to take things that I like, that I grew up eating, and put my own spin on them.”

Last year the self-described “junk-food junkie and Taco Bell super fan,” along with co-chef Vince Thomascik, patterned a slow-cooked beef short rib on house-made ranch tortillas “with all the fixins’” after a Bell signature dish.

When everybody wins

On the hyper-seasonal menus, each item is made from scratch, prepared in house and sourced as locally as possible.

“Quality and consistency,” Sawyer says. “We use Certified Angus Beef^® (CAB^®) because we know exactly what we are getting every time.”

“Everyone knows about the pork belly,” he says. But a beef navel?

“It comes from the short plate, an extension of the brisket flat anatomically,” explains CAB Chef Liaison Bryan Schaaf. Normally, it’s tossed into the grinder or exported due to the extra “love” needed to make it delicious, but that plate or beef belly has a profile like brisket. “It’s rich and steak-like when low-temperature cooking breaks down the connective tissue.”

Chefs from the leading beef brand came to Sawyer and partners and showed them ways to use inexpensive cuts they’d never heard of. A relationship began to blossom, leaving beef as a regular on The Plum’s menu.

When Sawyer and partner Thomascik decided to open a burger joint in 2019, they knew their burgers needed to stand out, so they turned to CAB.

After eight hours in the brand’s Culinary Center in Wooster, Ohio, getting to really know different cuts, grinds and blends of beef, together they formulated Good Company’s burger flavor to perfection.

“You don’t get that relationship with just anyone,” Sawyer says. “If we didn’t have that relationship with CAB, our burger wouldn’t taste like it does. We’d be at the mercy of the processor we got our grinds from—but instead we have this wonderful relationship and a great tool to learn through.”

Sawyer and Thomascik have attended more than a half-dozen CAB educational events in the past few years, from chef seminars to tours of packing plants and processing facilities to gain deeper knowledge of the products they use and new cuts to try.

“It’s great because CAB’s goal is to bring a chef into the meat lab or culinary center and show you it’s not just the ribeye, strip steak and filet,” Sawyer says. “There are all these other cuts being underutilized, that you can get a good value out of for your restaurant and therefore good value for your customer, and everybody wins.”

Alternative cuts like the short-plate navel are of immense value to chefs. Value to Sawyer means value to the cattleman because his regular demand for that item adds value outside of the steaks everybody knows about.

While The Plum may be a rare atmosphere for a steak, beef is here to stay in Chef Sawyer’s ingredient repertoire.

He’ll stay with the goal of pushing the envelope on “acceptable cuisine” in Cleveland with creative menu items. Part of that progressive plan is beef, and to keep learning and growing with the premium brand.

Why push the envelope? Sawyer doesn’t have to compete with “steakhouses” because innovation in the kitchen lets his places stand out and create a craving unlike any other in the area.

He’s gone from leaving beef off the menu to a “beef belly connoisseur,” introducing guests to a whole new way to enjoy beef. It’s a new perspective Sawyer shares with everyone who walks through his doors.

Feeding Quality Forum registration open

by Kylee Kohls

It’s no secret, we’re producing more high-quality beef than ever before, but does that suggest a danger of oversaturation or swamping demand?

Buzz words and marketing claims talk a lot, but consumers speak with their wallets. What do they say about the years to come?

As animal health concerns arise, how do traceability and antibiotic use play into your plans from calving to finishing and beyond?

The 14^th annual Feeding Quality Forum (FQF) in Amarillo, Texas, this August 27-28 will serve up answers to these and other points of discussion. It’s as an opportunity for cattlemen to stretch their thinking to take in the latest research and technology applications relevant to business now.

“The Forum is designed to create a learning environment for feeders and commercial cow-calf producers targeting high-quality beef to come together and network with the industry,” says Kara Lee, Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) production brand manager.

New this year, Cargill will host a packing plant tour on Tuesday morning, prior to forum kickoff but with limited space on a first come, first served basis and an anticipated waitlist.

Touring the plant means a chance to witness the large-scale plant procedures and better understand the process after animals leave the feedyard.

“Don’t be discouraged if waitlisted for this opportunity,” Lee says. The Cargill beef procurement team will host a session later in the afternoon to continue the conversation.

Dan Basse, AgResource president and analyst, kicks off FQF Tuesday afternoon with a wealth of knowledge on global marketplace dynamics. Then the program moves on to discussing quality beef supplies and carcass grading technologies.

The evening continues with the Industry Achievement Award Banquet to celebrate 2019 honoree Jerry Bohn, Pratt, Kansas.

“Jerry has been a tremendous champion for the entire beef industry and is a well-respected icon in the cattle feeding world,” Lee says. “He has been integral in many industry organizations, shifting toward quality. He is forward thinking and a great partner for anyone in the beef industry.”

The tone Wednesday is set with the “Consumer Buzz Around Beef” session, covering the ever-changing topic of consumer demand and how it drives the way we produce beef.

Scott Laudert, beef cattle technical consultant, continues the conversation on liver abscesses and antibiotic use before West Texas A&M University veterinarian John Richeson digs into technological advancements in characterizing disease risk and improving diagnoses Wednesday morning.

Traceability has been discussed and highly debated for years now, but the idea of using that technology to improve the control of a disease outbreak and elevate consumer trust is intriguing, Lee says.

Joe Leathers, of the 6666 Ranch, Guthrie, Texas, will bring his insight to the table as he outlines opportunities for success and challenges the ranch discovered in their pilot traceability project.

“We have two goals: one, we want our attendees to leave sessions with tangible, take-home points – things they may not necessarily get at their local cattlemen’s meeting,” says Lee. “We also want to introduce some ideas and research that will stretch their thinking a little bit. We want this to be a very progressive and forward-thinking event that allows them to think ‘maybe today I’m not facing this idea’ or ‘I haven’t considered this,’ but introducing some of those ideas and sharing the most cutting-edge data and research in the industry to really provide something very thought provoking for them.”

Feeding Quality Forum is made possible by Zoetis, Diamond V, Cargill, Micronutrients, Feedlot Magazine, Angus Link and Angus Source, and CAB.

This year, on-site registration will not be available. Early registration is $100, due July 22, which is also final cutoff for the Cargill packing plant tour. After July 22, registrations will cost $200, and they close August 9^th. Student registration is also available this year for $50.

Registration is open now at www.feedingqualityforum.com, and will not be accepted after August 9.

Registration fees include access to all educational sessions, packing plant participation, ticket to the Industry Achievement Award Banquet, lunch Wednesday and access to presentations after the event.

To learn more about the speakers and full agenda, visit www.feedingqualityforum.com.

CAB Producer Communications interns named

by Kylee Kohls and Chelsea Dinterman

Learning doesn’t stop because school’s out for summer. You can only learn so much in a classroom, but in a pasture, feedyard, meats lab or chef’s kitchen—that’s a whole new story.

The Certified Angus Beef^® (CAB^®) brand’s producer communications team welcomes Chelsea Dinterman, Walkersville, Md., and Kylee Kohls, Litchfield, Minn., to the brand’s homeroom in Wooster, Ohio, this summer as interns.

Growing up on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Dinterman saw how disconnected the public is from their food source. Experiences in 4-H and FFA gave her a passion for sharing agriculture’s story and led her to Oklahoma State University where she is a senior in ag communications.

Dinterman has past intern experience as a summer program assistant for Adams County 4-H in Gettysburg, Pa., and as donor relations intern at the Oklahoma State University Foundation.

“I am excited to learn the ins and outs of cattle production while sharing the stories of those who feed us,” Dinterman says. “I have no doubt after this summer I will be a stronger advocate for production agriculture.”

Raised on a registered cattle farm in central Minnesota, active in 4-H and FFA, Kohls brings her knowledge and enthusiasm for beef wherever she goes.

Seven-generation roots in farming led her to study ag communications, food safety, meat science and social media at South Dakota State University, where she will be a senior this fall.

College in another state didn’t keep Kohls from serving as 2017-18 Minnesota FFA State Secretary and working as media intern at both University of Minnesota Extension and the Arizona National Livestock Show, as well as freelancing for the Brookings Register.

“I feel called to share food’s story from farm to fork with producers and consumers alike to continue to build relationships and trust in our food system,” she says. “Beef is my passion and I am eager to share stories with cattlemen across the country as together we work to provide a quality product for generations to come.”

Dinterman and Kohls work on a variety of platforms from print to broadcast and online to connect cattle farmers and ranchers with the latest ideas on how to produce the best beef profitably. The pair work with the producer communications team to create feature stories, technical news releases and video scripts, along with photography and blogs.

For these two, the summer classroom moves to pasture, feedyard, retail meat case and kitchen as they continue to share their stories with cattlemen who target the brand across North America.

CAB Producer Communications team hires two

By Miranda Reiman

High-quality beef doesn’t happen by accident, but rather by careful planning and making informed decisions.

In a continued effort to arm cattlemen with the production and economic news they need to make those careful calculations, the Certified Angus Beef^® (CAB^®) brand recently hired two agriculture journalists.

Morgan Marley and Abbie Burnett joined the team as producer communications specialists in May.

Marley grew up on a cattle and poultry farm near Fayetteville, Arkansas. She earned a degree in ag communications from the University of Arkansas before continuing on with a master’s in public communication and technology from Colorado State University.

She interned with the American Angus Association’s communications department in 2017, and most recently worked out of a home office for Bayer Crop Science on a variety of social media, web and video projects.

“Morgan’s talents for web content, writing and technical communication, combined with an inherent understanding of cattle production, will be an asset to the team,” says Miranda Reiman, CAB director of producer communications.

Burnett is a recent graduate of Texas Tech University, where she double majored in ag communications and electronic media and communications.

She picked up a wide variety of experience during her studies, including work for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, serving as the media intern at the American Royal and National Western Stock Show, and interning with The Nature Conservancy.

“Abbie brings strong communication skills, from writing to photography and videography, combined with agriculture experience from growing up on a Texas cotton farm,” Reiman says.

Both women are working out of the corporate headquarters in Wooster, Ohio.

“These are jack-of-all-trades type of positions, where they’ll be doing everything from photography and web updates to writing and social media. Regardless of the medium, the goal is the same: to get cattlemen the information they need to be more successful at reaching and getting paid for producing CAB qualifiers,” Reiman says. “They’ll also serve as story tellers, taking those important messages of cattle care and stewardship back to our consumer team.”

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