fi nd a way.’ I absolutely believe that is the truth. Now, there are some logistical issues to work out, but if there
THINKING TOWARD MAXIMIZING REVENUE PER ANIMAL BECAUSE IT IS A DIFFERENT BUSINESS THAN IT USED TO BE.
is a profi table business, somebody is going to be in it.” The increased value also changes the way cattle are
managed, Anderson says. “We must fi nd ways to maximize product yields or
revenue per head. We only have so many of them. We do not have as many as we used to, but we can maxi- mize what each individual animal will create for us.” He says it can be hard to change the way of thinking
for people like himself — those with a few gray hairs — but a focus shift is going to be required. “For most of our lifetimes, we have focused on
low-cost this or that,” Anderson says. “We are a com- modity business, so of course cost matters, but we had better shift our thinking toward maximizing revenue per animal because it is a different business than it used to be.” He says that also means managing cattle as indi- viduals instead of as a full pen.
tscra.org WE HAD BETTER SHIFT OUR
“Say I want to produce this exact thing and thou-
sands of them. Well, how do you do that? You have to know something more about your cattle than we know. We are going to need genetic evaluation that is meaningful, useful and fast. We are also going to need better health diagnostics, some of which is be- ing developed or tested now. We will need those tools to better tell us about the health of the cattle coming into our yards,” he says. While some of these tools were not economically
feasible in the past, Anderson says that now they make sense. “We can invest more dollars per head because the
value and value differences are greater than they have ever been,” he explains. “A lot of stuff that might cost 2 or 4 or 9 bucks that did not make any sense when a cow was worth $1,100 makes a lot of sense when one is worth $2,500.” Of course with higher-valued cattle comes more
pressure from the consumer. “We are asking consumers to pay a lot more for beef
than we ever have before — and they are doing it — but they are going to ask some things of us in return,” Anderson says. “They are going to set specifi cations and we are going to have to hit them. And not just say we hit them, but have documentation proving we did, whether we are talking antibiotic use, animal care practices or something else.”
September 2015 The Cattleman 111
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