The Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) will invest approximately $39 million into programs for beef promotion, research, consumer information, industry information, foreign marketing and producer communications during fiscal 2021, subject to U.S. Department of Agriculture approval.

At the end of its September meeting held recently in Denver, Colo., the Beef Promotion Operating Committee (BPOC) approved checkoff funding for a total of 13 grant proposals brought by nine contractors for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2021. The committee includes 10 producers from CBB and 10 producers from the Federation of State Beef Councils.

Nine contractors brought a total of $47.725 million worth of funding requests to BPOC this week, nearly $8.345 million more than the funds available from the CBB budget

“Producers drive all the decisions that the BPOC makes during these important meetings,” CBB and BPOC chair Jared Brackett said, adding that U.S. cattle producers and importers "carefully consider every proposal to determine where we should spend these checkoff dollars, with one primary goal in mind: increasing beef demand to provide producers with the best possible value for their checkoff investments.”

Brackett said contractors came to the meetings with some incredibly innovative ideas and projects.

“As always, it’s a real challenge to balance the budget and distribute our limited amount of checkoff dollars to these contractors in a way that we believe will best drive beef demand,” he said. “I personally thank all our contractors and committee members for dedicating considerable time and effort to continue moving the beef industry forward."

In the end, BPOC approved proposals from eight national beef organizations for funding through the fiscal 2021 CBB budget as follows:

Broken out by budget component – as outlined by the Beef Promotion & Research Act of 1985 – the "Fiscal 2021 Plan of Work for the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion & Research Board" budget includes:

The full fiscal 2021 CBB budget is approximately $43.1 million. Separate from the authorization requests, other expenses funded include $254,000 for program evaluation; $445,000 for program development; $720,000 for USDA oversight (which includes $450,000 for Agricultural Marketing Service oversight); $190,000 for CBB legal and compliance, and $2.1 million for CBB administration. The fiscal 2021 budget represents a decrease of 3.2%, or $1.4 million, from the fiscal 2020 budget of $44.5 million.

All authorization requests and budgets are now sent onto the full CBB for approval, and then to the Agricultural Marketing Service for review, with a start date for the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.