Industry
Future of Beef Revisited: Consumer Issues and Demand
By Kris Ringwell, NDSU Extension Service
After four decades of engaging consumers and integrating producers, I still ponder.
The sensitivity between consumers and beef producers is increasing, but the sensitivity may not always be on the same tracks. Consumers register their opinion at the checkout counter through product selection and validate their expressed opinions by how they shop and how much they pay.
With the expansion of the internet, the opportunity for consumer validation, along with the expression of any disappointment with a meal, or a particular product or service, never has been greater. The internet expands the ability to monitor consumers, allowing businesses to stock what and when a product is most likely to sell.
Is the situation the same for cattle producers and the cattle they sell? No. So perhaps the balance between consumers and producers has yet to be determined.
How this reality connects to the producer who is selling the cows and calves is probably a loose fit, yet consumer thoughts need to be integrated with production expansion or contraction. After all, that is what drives the business.
In 2006, I reviewed an article by Helen Jensen(“ Consumer Issues and Demand” published by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in the online Choices publication, http:// www. choicesmagazine. org, Volume 21, No. 3, 2006). She noted several very real impacts for small and middlesized operations that loom in the future in regard to the consumer and demand.
Have these impacts changed in the last 12 years? Did these impacts actually become
PHOTO BY: SARAH ANNE JOHNSON, OH
176 | JUNE / JULY 2018