Planning for FY 2008 Checkoff Programs

It’s midweek in a busy week of checkoff planning meetings that have drawn producers and state beef council representatives from across the country to begin developing plans for checkoff investments in Fiscal 2008. These meetings also mark the midpoint in the year-long checkoff planning process.

This week began with a two-day gathering of state beef council execs and beef producer leaders from the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the Federation of State Beef Councils, who worked with checkoff program managers from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the U.S. Meat Export Federation, the American National CattleWomen, the National Livestock Producers Association, and the American Veal Association to map out strategies for promotion, information, and research projects aimed at increasing consumer demand for beef.

Participants offered input and suggestions for strategies including product, nutrition, industry resource, veal, foreign marketing and safety strategies for programs in promotion, research, foreign marketing, consumer and industry information, and producer communications. The goal was to agree upon a direction for checkoff programs that focuses on meeting the goals of the Industry Long Range Plan and the demands and preferences of today’s consumers. The basis for the strategies is market research that maps out those consumer preferences in the current marketplace so that limited checkoff dollars can be targeted as effectively as possible.

The next step in the process is under way today, as producers who volunteer to serve as chairmen and vice chairmen of Joint Checkoff Committees (Cattlemen’s Beef Board and Federation of State Beef Councils) are presented with the work of the first two days of the week and offer their input as they look toward directing development of specific checkoff programs for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1, 2007. Upon their review and input sessions throughout the day, the producer chairmen and vice chairmen of the committee groups — Global Consumer Marketing, Research and Knowledge Management, Public Opinion and Issues Management, and Industry and Producer Services — will go through the same process this evening.

On Thursday morning, the producers who serve on the Joint Industry Budget Committee will take a look at the strategies and analyze the estimated dollar amounts required to bring those strategies to life and come up with a budget recommendation to forward to the Beef Promotion Operating Committee. The Operating Committee, which eventually makes the final program recommendations and is made up of 10 producer members of the Beef Board and 10 producers from state beef councils, will meet on Thursday afternoon to offer its input about the strategies and to review the budget recommendation. The Operating Committee will then provide contracting organizations and potential checkoff contractors with direction for developing specific programs to present to Joint Checkoff Committees during the Cattle Industry Summer Conference in Denver July 17-20.

Among participants, there is no doubt that this is a thorough process. In fact, one producer said on Tuesday that he previously had little understanding about how in-depth the checkoff planning process was and that learning about it and having direct input into it this week has increased his confidence in the validity of the program proposals that come before committees during the summer.

In addition to the planning meetings, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board Executive Committee has its spring meeting scheduled for Friday morning (May 18), also here in Denver. Members of that committee also are listening in on planning meetings and will receive a report from the Operating Committee regarding such. It also will review a proposal from the Beef Board and Federation of State Beef Councils to bring all producer communication programming regarding the checkoff under management of the Beef Board beginning in Fiscal 2008.