YOUNG CATTLE RAISERS


Checkoff Helps Students Learn, Tell Beef’s Story


Chef Mike Erickson, culinary instructor at John B. Connally High School in Pfl ugerville; David Barrow, fi lmmaker and professor at the Art Institute of Austin; and a group of students have embarked on a fi lmmaking project, “True Beef.” The project follows a group of culinary students as they learned what the beef industry was really about, while Barrow’s students learned fi rsthand about making a fi lm.


By Katrina Huffstutler C


HECKOFF-FUNDED PASTURE-TO-PLATE TOURS HAVE LONG been a powerful tool used to educate chefs, nutri- tionists and other infl uencers. But no one could


have guessed the idea born from one such event — and its potential far-reaching impact for years to come. Chef Mike Erickson, culinary instructor at John B.


Connally High School in the Pfl ugerville Independent School District, was selected by the Texas Beef Council to visit Kansas a couple of years ago on a pasture-to- plate tour. The idea? That he’d come back full of new information and ideas to pass along to his students, aspiring chefs. An ambitious leader with an entrepre- neurial spirit, Erickson came back with a lot more. The event had such a profound effect on him that


he knew he had to do something bigger with his new- found knowledge and connections. Russell Woodward, Texas Beef Council’s senior manager, product market-


28 The Cattleman April 2014


ing, recounts a conversation he had with Erickson upon his return. They were discussing how the instructor was ap-


plying what he’d learned on the tour to his own cur- riculum — along with some of the other things he and other culinary teachers were doing. That’s when “Food, Inc.” came up. You remember “Food, Inc.,” right? The unfl attering 2008 documentary featuring Michael Pollan sent the agricultural industry into a tailspin. Erickson said many instructors, himself included, had been using the fi lm in class because “there wasn’t anything else.” “It was a real genesis for him,” Woodward says. “There isn’t any curriculum or fi lm about the ag in-


dustry available for classroom use. We just talked about, ‘What could we do?’ We need to tell this story about agriculture using the culinary students as they learn about beef and agriculture and develop something that


thecattlemanmagazine.com


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