Outlook
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. --Charles F. Kettering – American engineer and inventor
The future ain't what it used to be. --Yogi Berra – baseball player
There is a type of strategic planning called futurism and its practitioners are referred to as “futurists.”
Futurists are involved in one or more of three types of planning and analysis: forecasting the future, using quantitative and qualitative means; imagining the future, using primarily intuition, writing, and communication skills; and creating the future, using techniques of planning and consulting. There is a World Future Society and, if you’re interested, a website www.wfs.org.
A main objective of Beef Issues Quarterly (BIQ) is to be a futurist resource for the beef industry – to create understanding of what is going on today and provide some outlook for issues and changes that will be relevant to industry planning and issues management going forward. As the futurists like to say, the future is built today.
One approach to looking ahead was captured by futurist, strategic planning expert and author Michael Kami who said it is important to “keep your eyes on the things you can’t see.” How is it possible to do that? One way is to look for, and look at trends. And the way to look at trends is to use what’s called abductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive and inductive). It’s the kind of reasoning, called backward reasoning, used by Sherlock Holmes when he noted to Watson that the remarkable thing about the barking dog in the night was that the dog didn’t bark. Thus, Holmes reasoned that the dog was familiar with the person who committed the crime in the night.
In abductive reasoning terms, the surprising fact, C, is observed but if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. Therefore, since we can see trends we can do some backward reasoning to hypothesize about why those trends are occurring. This helps us understand and react to trends.
Supermarket health & wellness program
This edition of BIQ presents some trend analysis by looking at the intersection of supermarkets and consumer desires to make healthier food choices. Registered Dietitians Audrey Monroe – Director of Nutrition for the Kansas Beef Council – and Cheryl Hendricks – Marketing Manager, NCBA – take a look at how supermarkets are capitalizing on their convenient nature to respond to consumer desires for health and wellness services.
Cattle industry outlook
One thing futurists can’t forecast is the weather, and the 2011 drought has caused some fundamental changes in industry structure. CattleFax examines the effects of the drought on herd contraction and provides a near term outlook for beef supplies and prices through 2013.
Effects of the Choice-Select spread
Cattle Fax Analyst, Lance Zimmerman discusses the seasonal and long-term effects of the Choice-Select spread and analyzes the effects of forecasted smaller cattle supplies for 2012 as well as the demand factor represented by Wal-Mart’s decision to offer premium choice beef in its meat case. These are expected to mean declining choice product availability next year and a wider than normal spread. However, the extra margin creates an incentive to produce Choice cattle that has not existed in a few years and should be a signal to cattlemen to change production and management practices to benefit from the increased spread.
Five-year consumer trends
John Lundeen, Senior Executive Director of Market Research for NCBA, looks over five years of data from the semi-annual Consumer Beef Index and presents eight key historical insights on consumers and beef consumption. The data show most consumer perceptions about beef are positive and improving over time which speaks well for future demand.
Foodborne illness incidence declines
A trend definitely headed in the right direction is the incidence of foodborne illness. Dan Sullivan – Manager, Issues Response, NCBA – outlines 2010 statistics from the Center for Disease Control’s Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) which shows infections from six major pathogens declined in 2010. Illness from E. coli O157:H7 has declined significantly and it is the only one of the nine infections tracked by FoodNet to reach the 2010 national health objective of less than one case per 100,000 people.
Feeding future generations
A forum co-hosted by The Atlantic magazine and the Beef Checkoff focused on the complex challenge of feeding a growing population with limited natural resources. The forum explored a number of topics including food security, environmental and sustainability challenges, challenges faced by farmers and ranchers and the Millennial generation’s views on sustainability.
Korean exports recovery
Looking ahead at exports, Dan Halstrum – Senior VP of Global Marketing & Communications, U.S. Meat Export Federation – examines the recovery of beef exports to South Korea. In 2003, South Korea was a rapidly growing market for our beef exports ranking only behind Japan and Mexico. The 2003 discovery of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States created a serious setback but now, with the resurgence in Korea consumer confidence and the recent approval of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the forecast is for continued solid growth to this key trading partner.
Meatless Mondays – trend or hype?
Sometimes, things that are touted as trends turn out to be little more than a campaign of hype driven by an agenda. Such is the case with Meatless Mondays. Season Solorio – Director of Issues Management, NCBA – examines the original WW I origins of Meatless Monday, reviews how it has been resurrected as an anti-meat campaign by an activist-funded organization with a mandate to target animal agriculture and provides data showing how few Americans actually participate in Meatless Monday.
Power of social media
A trend having major effects on interactions and availability of information, not only in the United States but globally is the increasing pervasiveness and power of online communications. In 2007, the Food Foresight trends report from the California Institute of Food & Agriculture Research at UC Davis noted a trend that consumers are driving revolutionary change at least in part by marshaling their own information sources and pulling the knowledge they want through the system, versus waiting for the traditional institutions to help them sort things out. Consumers are increasingly turning to specialized websites for help with decisions but the biggest influence is coming from personal networks of neighbors, family and friends; in short, social media.
The checkoff has funded a media monitoring program since 1991 focused on traditional media. That program has changed in the past several years to accommodate the growing influence of social media. If you don’t usually read the beef industry media analysis, I encourage you to take a look this time. Note especially how engaged social media are in covering beef issues and compare the coverage and topics with the traditional media coverage.
Industry animal welfare research
This edition of BIQ also offers a discussion of animal welfare. Animal welfare continues to garner more and more attention from consumers and, unfortunately, the extreme positions and messages of activist groups tend to dominate the conversations. BIQ Trends Advisory Panel member Jason Ahola – Associate Professor of Beef Production Systems, Colorado State University sat down with Dr. Lily Edwards-Callaway – Assistant Professor, Kansas State University – to discuss industry efforts and actual research to improve the welfare of food animals. Dr. Edwards-Callaway’s research interests include understanding the relationship between physiology and behavior to improve livestock animal welfare.
Do livestock compete with humans for food?
The BIQ commentary this quarter is provided by Dr. Jude Capper, Associate Professor of Dairy Sciences, Washington State University, who explores the claim that, to feed close to 10 billion people by 2050 will require improving crop yields, reducing deforestation and reducing meat and dairy consumption.
Please contact us at any time to let us know what you think of Beef Issues Quarterly and to share with us your comments as well as specific topics you would like to see addressed. Please e-mail us at info@beefissuesquarterly.com.
Rick McCarty
Vice President
Issue Analysis and Strategy
National Cattlemen's Beef Association
