Helen Weise, seedstock producer from Manning, Iowa, and chair of the checkoff’s Retail Committee, says the summer months bring promising opportunities for beef producers in the grocery market meat case.
“We’ve had a lot of challenges you know, of course the economic downturn has been difficult and so in the middle of the year, we ended up with a lot of extra middle meats and our supply was so large. So we decided to do a campaign to try and get rid of those middle meats because you know there’s less consumer spending and we want to keep beef on the plate. And the retailers, we feel at this time, are the best partners that we can have to keep beef on the plate. And so we’ve had just a tremendous response from retailers and consumers are enjoying it as well.” (32 seconds)
Wiese says retailers are diligently working in conjunction with the beef checkoff to expand coupon opportunities to consumers. She says grilling is so popular because it’s easy, convenient, healthy and versatile. And, during the summer grilling season, steaks from Beef Alternative Merchandising (BAM) – a middle meats promotional program – give consumers the perfect steaks for grilling, in portions they are asking for.
Wiese 2: “Well, we’re going to be expanding the summer grilling campaign, and we have some new partnerships and there’s a lot of couponing…and that’s going to be starting basically the first of May until after Labor Day. And we’re very well aware that more people are grilling all year-round, so we’re expanding those programs, we’re expanding the partnerships. There’s going to be over 300 million coupons that are available. And people, these consumers, are really into coupons and the neat thing about the coupons is they’re all paid by our partners and so our checkoff dollars are not paying for any of those coupons.” (33 seconds)
So what do these checkoff-funded programs mean for producers?
“For instance, the middle meat campaign, the volume sales went up in a 13-week period that ended mid-August, 8.5%. And so we were really glad to see that, and competing proteins didn’t see nearly that growth. So that was really a positive for us, and it not only increased in volume, but the dollars spent were up from a year ago. So we’re really pleased – you know, we’re watching this, we’re making sure our checkoff dollars are being used wisely and being invested to the benefit of the producer. I think there’s a lot of opportunity – I think there’s a lot of people working really hard to work on producer profitability to try and increase demand or at least level off demand. We’ve had a lot of stress, we’ve had a lot of issues, but we’re working very hard to continue to keep beef on the plate.” (49 seconds)
For information on other efforts being funded with your beef checkoff investment, visit MyBeefCheckoff.com.
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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.
Source: The Beef Checkoff Program