and that there will be demand for beef. This is an as- sumption, to be sure, but I believe a fairly safe one. I am also not addressing how beef products may change in terms of how they will be processed to meet consumer demands for convenience and lifestyle, etc. Given the assumption that beef will be in demand, I will focus on how cattle and beef production might occur. There are 2 general areas of consideration for addressing cattle and beef production over the next century. The fi rst challenge is to consider those aspects of the
industry that will not change. Cattle are ruminants; ruminants eat forage; and they do so in a diverse range of outdoor environments. The ability to use forages has been, and will continue
to be, the economic foundation of competitiveness of the beef industry. Moreover, beef production is based on the disas-
sembly of a complex input — the carcass — into a vast array of products. The resulting challenge is to mar- ket this diverse set of products in a multitude of fi nal markets. This will continue to be the basic production system of the beef cattle industry and the challenges inherent in that system will continue. However, advances in the understanding of genetics
may lead to selection of animals better and more spe- cifi cally adapted to different production environments, probably with more emphasis on genetic composites and less differentiation of specifi c breeds. This will lead to less uncertainty about animal performance in different environments and more ability to target animals to specifi c markets. The aspects of the beef cattle industry that are likely
to change relate to issues that have been, and continue to be, challenges for the industry. The beef cattle industry has long struggled with
the incongruity between the inherent value-based dif- ferentiation of beef products and the cost effi ciencies of commodity-based beef production. Despite improvements in the past 2 decades the
large volumes that drive cost effi ciencies, especially at the packer and feedlot levels, result in production and marketing systems that are based on managing large groups of animals based on averages. The specifi c beef products that are needed to fi t the wide range of fi nal demands are, for the most part, still found by search- ing the set of products in the meat cooler rather than specifi cally produced. The diffi culty of knowing early in the production
process which animals are best suited for which markets means that, to a large extent, quantity still trumps qual-
tscra.org
ity in the beef industry. This will change if the industry is to achieve maximum value potential in the market. The challenge for the next century will be to in-
crease the ability to understand the product potential of animals from particular production systems and develop more specifi c marketing streams to accom- modate diverse product needs of the market, thereby increasing value potential across the entire industry. This implies an ability to target individual animals
at the onset of production for specifi c fi nal markets, while simultaneously managing animals through sys- tems that preserve as much commodity cost effi ciency as possible. Large-scale systems will not likely disap- pear, but may operate differently in order to facilitate more individual animal management and marketing within those systems. All this discussion suggests that the biggest change
in the beef industry in the next century is likely to be information availability and access within the industry. For the beef cattle industry to maximize value poten-
tial, it is essential to know at the beginning of produc- tion what the animals are, the environment to which they are best adapted, how they should be managed and the fi nal market to which they should be targeted. This implies individual animal identifi cation and
preservation all the way through the product level. The industry cannot achieve maximum effi ciency and value potential if any part of the production and marketing system is forced to operate without knowing the genetic and production history of each animal. The cows may not look a lot different in 2114, and
they will still be out in pastures. There will likely be cowboys on horseback looking at those cows, but the saddle horn will very likely have a computer embedded in it. The cowboy will manage cows, not so much by
what he sees looking out across the pasture, but by what he sees on the computer.
Kerry Cornelius TCU Ranch Management
Program director and Burnett Ranches professor, Fort Worth
E v e r y o n e knows that predicting the future is futile.
In my humble opinion, we can’t accurately imagine
December 2014 The Cattleman 93
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