Evaluate, Apply and Renew

So we’re here in Kansas City, wind gusts and all, with meetings of the producers who volunteer their time to serve on the Operating Committee, including those in Texas, Kansas and Missouri, who have lost cattle and land to Mother Nature during the last week. But they’re here nonetheless, volunteering their time to manage the national Beef Checkoff Program.

During Wednesday’s Operating Committee meeting, new committee members were welcomed, introduced, and taken through an orientation of their responsibilities. Other discussion centered on the checkoff’s program evaluation system, the results of the latest Producer Attitude Survey, discussion of the checkoff’s role in the new Beef Industry Long Range Plan, and program status reports from checkoff contractors.

EVALUATION 

On evaluation, producer representatives from the Joint Evaluation Committee came before the Operating Committee to remind of the importance of applying the findings of the checkoff’s evaluation program. When the committee submits audits or annual evaluations of checkoff programs, contractors managing those projects need to take the recommendations therein very seriously, the committee representatives said. Contractors should be asked to respond directly to how they plan to address each of the recommendations in an audit or evaluation, and then do so, they said. Otherwise, the value of the evaluation process is not fully realized.

PRODUCER ATTITUDE SURVEY

The latest checkoff-funded survey of beef producer attitudes indicates continued support of the checkoff program, though cattlemen seem to have weak knowledge about specific checkoff programs beyond advertising. Those were a couple of the messages that surfaced as the Beef Promotion Operating Committee heard a summary of the topline results of that survey.

Completed for the Beef Board by Aspen Media & Market Research, the Producer Attitude Survey completed in January 2006 indicated 73 percent producer support for their Beef Checkoff Program. In addition, it found that 73 percent of producers surveyed consider themselves “very informed” or “informed” about their checkoff program. And while there are a growing number of producers who can name a specific checkoff program, their knowledge of programs beyond advertising is very limited, for the most part.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

In its final action before adjourning on Wednesday morning, the Operating Committee appointed a subgroup of its members to work via email and telephone to revamp the form that potential checkoff contractors use to submit requests for checkoff funding. Committee member Gary Voogt, a producer from Michigan, suggested that the form contains too much complicated language and needs to be simplified. For example, he suggested that requests for checkoff funding be called, simply, “Project Proposals” rather than the current “Authorization Request” title.

The purpose of this subgroup, he said, should be to build a form that any new potential contracting organization could understand without having to call and ask. The appointed subgroup will bring its recommended format back to the Operating Committee to consider at its next meeting, June 7-8, 2006, in Amarillo, Texas.