I was raised in upstate New York, the child of two veterinarians. After graduating from Kansas State in 2010, I became a first-generation farmer near Palco. Today, my wife Codi is on the farm full-time with me, and in July, we welcomed our baby daughter, Lynn.
I’ve always tried to get involved in organizations, whether professional or personal. However, I think farmers in general are often happy to let someone else speak for them. While there are times I’d prefer that as well, I realize it’s very important for our voices to be heard, particularly when our livelihoods are at stake.
As a cattle producer, I decided to get involved with the beef checkoff and learn more about how producer dollars are spent.
In 2022, Kansas Farm Bureau nominated me to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, the governing body of the national beef checkoff program, and over the past year, I’ve learned about the opportunities and challenges facing the beef industry.
While you may know that the beef checkoff’s primary goal is to drive demand, you may not realize the checkoff is constantly addressing misinformation about beef.
You’ve probably seen and heard a lot of chatter about beef recently, from dietary guidelines and sustainability claims to meat substitutes and animal welfare and everything in between.
Of course, much of that chatter is not factual.
However, it still has the potential to affect beef purchases at grocery stores or restaurants, which impacts not just my livelihood, but that of the nearly 800,000 other beef producers in the United States today.
During my short time on the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, I’ve learned how the beef checkoff actively monitors television, online and social media to discover emerging issues that could threaten consumer confidence in beef. By knowing what issues are out there, the checkoff can fund research that will help the beef industry uncover and share the facts about our product’s sustainability, nutrition, safety and quality.
Those efforts come to life through checkoff-funded initiatives like middle and high school curriculums about greenhouse gases and cattle, attendance at New York City’s Climate Week conference and immersion events that bring inner city teachers to real farms to learn about how much we producers care for our land and cattle.
There are partnerships with the American Heart Association to educate consumers about beef’s role in a healthy diet, as well as programs providing health care providers with educational content through webinars, in-office visits and at professional conferences.
By sharing information through both consumer and professional outreach, the checkoff can also respond to questions about how beef compares with other proteins, including the plant-based, alterative proteins that have emerged in recent years.
I’m proud to be on the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. It’s given me an opportunity to share cattle producers’ perspectives from right here in northern Kansas with the rest of the country. And I know the beef checkoff continues to fund projects that have a tremendously positive impact on the American beef industry.
Not everyone understands how the checkoff works, but I encourage my fellow producers with questions to get involved. Go to the meetings – they’re open to all producers. Come chat with me as a Cattlemen’s Beef Board representative from here in Kansas. It’s by making our voices heard that we get the most value from this program we help fund.
Evan Lesser, Palco
Cattle producer and member, Cattlemen’s Beef Board