Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

“It is almost anticlimactic,” John Stevenson said of the sudden flurry of activity around individual animal identification. Stevenson should know. As director of the Kentucky Beef Network, he has worked on a major project for the past few years aimed at setting up a cattle ID program in the South. They are not finished but certainly have laid the groundwork for a comprehensive program; one that is being used as a pilot program for the USDA.

KEEP THE END IN MIND
Stevenson and Jim Akers, executive director of the Southeastern Livestock Network, each have the same goal in mind.

“We don’t want the basic structure of the industry changed; we need to keep the small producer in the mix,” Akers said. Toward that end, the entire beef industry is involved in the advancement of the Kentucky cattle industry.

We need to go back six years to when tobacco settlements were made, giving Kentucky several billion dollars.

“It was obvious that the impact of the changes in the tobacco industry was going to affect agriculture the most,” Stevenson said. There were thousands of small producers who used to have a two- or three-acre patch of tobacco that they used for their pocket money. With the changes, they would not be able to market their product. Kentucky’s ag industry stepped up to take up the slack.

“In 1999, we presented a unified plan for agriculture to the Kentucky government,” Stevenson said. When Stevenson says unified he means everyone – no matter their agenda – and the group got it done. Millions of dollars were set aside and the entire ag community is proud of their work.

“Some say it is easy to cooperate when you have the dollars,” Stevenson said. “No. We cooperated and now we have the dollars.”

This program took the revenue generated by tobacco to number four in the state and cattle to number two, right behind horses.

We are talking about big bucks. According to state records, investment totals from March 2001 to April 2005 for the Kentucky Development Fund’s county model programs show: Cattle Genetics Improvement: 104 counties – $10,061,127.19; Cattle Handling Facilities: 102 counties – $15,681,467.52; and Forage Improvement & Utilization: 101 counties – $17,674,420.80. It is no wonder that the quality of the cattle coming from the area has improved dramatically.

Gene Barber of Eugene Barber & Sons has certainly noticed the change. Barber is an old timer at the Blue Grass Stockyards in Lexington, buying cattle there since 1958.

“The Blue Grass Stockyards is the third largest auction market in the United States,” Barber said. “And the largest east of the Mississippi.

“The quality of the cattle here has improved. They used to be pretty plain, but now they will stand up to any as far as quality, and the health is good.

“That Jim Akers knows what he is doing,” Barber concluded.

One of Akers’ projects to keep the industry from changing too drastically is working with the auction markets, trying to help them find efficient ways to identify cattle individually.

“We need a simpler way to manage feeder sales,” said Akers, who also serves as the beef IRM coordinator for the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service.

“We set up tests for companies developing electronic tags and readers,” Akers said. “We will run every tag we can to get data on tags, trying to see what works in the environment and what works where.”

Akers has spent the last year working on the NCBA Animal ID Commission, one of 11 experts looking for solutions. They have done a great deal of research on what is being used in other countries and how their systems have performed.

“We learn what we can,” Akers said. “We are trying to keep from replowing all the ground. We have been working on this for a long time and, suddenly, it is a hot topic for the industry. Things may get more confusing in the near future as programs are debated and we have to decide who will manage it. I think the industry should run it. We can do it more efficiently, but all in all, it doesn’t have to be a big deal. The demand for verified cattle is increasing and auction barns out here are already being told that buyers want their cattle tagged up front.”

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
A data bank has been set up under the Kentucky Beef Network, LLC, a division of the Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association. The database is divided up into three components: basic cow-calf information, carcass data and market information for source verification. The source verification comes from a statement signed by the consigner stating that animals are Origin Verified, meaning they were born and raised on the farm prior to sale or that records have been maintained documenting the farm of birth and the country of origin. The producer certifies that he has individual birthdates, the date the bull was turned out or the date the cows started calving.

“We use programs developed by AgInfoLink,” Stevenson said. “We all knew Glenn Smith when he was in Georgia [as CEO of Georgia Cattlemen’s Association], we like the people and they understand what we want to do. They have been great to work with.

“It is like anything else. The computer side is easy. Getting accurate data is the hard part.” Their data is the property of the producer, and is for his or her use only.