By:
Ed Hunter (352) 392-1773 x 278

Source(s):
Bill Kunkle kunkle@animal.ufl.edu, (352) 392-9059

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Recent increases in the demand for beef and beef products will continue if producers satisfy consumers in terms of quality, price and convenience, according to a national beef marketing expert.

Wayne D. Purcell, alumni distinguished professor of agricultural and applied economics at Virginia Tech University, will be one of the featured speakers at the 50th Beef Cattle Short Course presented by the University of Florida’s department of animal sciences May 2-4 in Gainesville.

Purcell said large firms need to continue to support new product development, which has only been seen in the past three years, if the industry wants to maintain an increase in beef demand that began in 1997.

“From 1980 through 1997 we essentially saw a 50 percent cumulative decline in beef demand,” Purcell said. “Since 1997, we’ve turned back up about seven percentage points, so we are about a seventh of the way back up the hill.

“But if we don’t stimulate new product development and a realignment of what we offer with what consumers want, we have no guarantee this improvement is going to continue,” he said. “Also, the competition from pork and poultry is going to be even more intense.”

Purcell and other leading national experts on all aspects of the beef cattle industry will tell short course participants their version of the industry’s future. Bill Kunkle, a professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and one of the course planners, said this year’s golden anniversary short course will highlight information that will be helpful to Florida’s cattle industry.

“One thing we tried to emphasize this year was the fact that we’ve accomplished a lot in the past and are looking toward a lot of changes in the future,” Kunkle said. “We’ve brought in speakers from around the nation to highlight emerging trends and technologies in this industry.”

UF’s Kunkle said one of the goals of the short course is to highlight new methods that will help the beef cattle producer.

“There are new technologies that will allow producers to get new kinds of feedback on their calves,” Kunkle said. “Producers may soon be able to find out how cattle perform at the grazing level, the feedlot level, the packer level and perhaps even at the consumer level in terms of the tenderness and other genetically controlled traits.

“If we can identify animals that are undesirable in terms of the tenderness of the beef, we could market them in a different way and have better consumer satisfaction,” he said. “So we’re starting to develop systems using electronic identification to trace this information all the way back to the producer.”

Another new trend to be discussed is a Kentucky program in which beef producers have banded together to save money on production costs. Les Anderson, an assistant extension professor with the University of Kentucky, said the Allied Inputs in Marketing program targets the 80 to 90 percent of Kentucky’s beef producers that typically have herds with less then 50 cows.

“We realized the marketing and production disadvantages of small producers had to be addressed to help sustain their ability to stay in the cattle business,” Anderson said. “What we’ve done is create production and marketing alliances among producers so they can negotiate with suppliers.

“Through this program they have been able to substantially reduce their costs of production and in some cases save 30 to 40 percent,” he said.

Registration for the conference is $85 if received by April 16, or $110 after that date. For more information, call (352) 392-5930 or visit the conference Web site at: http://gnv2.ifas.ufl.edu/~conferweb/beef/.

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