The Beef Industry Long Range Plan task force officially introduced its new five-year plan for 2021-25 at the Cattle Industry Summer Business Meeting, held this week in Denver, Colo. The task force’s mission is to ensure the long-term prosperity of the U.S. beef industry by sustainably producing the most trusted, highest-quality and consistently satisfying protein for consumers around the world.

“We want beef to be the protein of choice, and we want the entire U.S. beef industry to be trusted and respected for its commitment to quality, safety and sustainability,” said task force leader Kim Brackett, a cow/calf rancher from Idaho. “The task force invested many hours discussing the current state of the industry and what we need to accomplish over the next five years. We feel we’ve established some important priorities and strategies as well as benchmarks for success that will help keep our industry on track through 2025 and beyond.”

The task force convened several times over the past year and considered all aspects of the industry, from production trends to economic factors, foreign markets, consumer trends and the competitive climate. The group evaluated the previous five-year plan and determined, based on industry trends and insights, where the industry should maintain and/or shift focus over the next five years.

Updated every five years, the plan is a tool designed to help the beef industry establish a common set of objectives and priorities. It communicates the industry’s strategic direction and provides insight on how the industry can serve its stakeholders by growing beef demand.

Since 1995, industry leaders have gathered to develop an aligned, comprehensive plan with the goal of increasing consumer demand for beef. These leaders are brought together to study and compile major areas of opportunity facing beef over the next five years.

The "2021-2025 Beef Industry Long Range Plan" includes the following key priorities and core strategies:

Industry objectives

1. Grow global demand for U.S. beef by promoting beef’s health and nutritional benefits, satisfying flavor and unparalleled safety.

2. Improve industry-wide profitability by expanding processing capacity and developing improved value-capture models.

3. Intensify efforts in researching, improving and communicating U.S. beef industry sustainability.

4. Make traceability a reality in the U.S. beef industry.

Core strategies

1. Drive growth in beef exports.

2. Grow consumer trust in beef production.

3. Develop and implement better business models to improve price discovery and value distribution across all segments.

4. Promote and capitalize on the multiple advantages of beef.

5. Improve the business and political climate for beef.

6. Safeguard and cultivate investment in beef industry research, marketing and innovation.

“We’ll measure the plan’s success by tracking key metrics for each core strategy,” Brackett said. “For example, one of the measures for the core strategy to ‘drive growth in beef exports’ will be to grow the value of U.S. beef exports as a percent of total beef value to 21% by 2025. Additionally, there are a number of other goals to help measure success specific to the other core strategies.”

The Long Range Plan Task Force encourages other beef industry businesses and organizations to utilize the plan as input for their own strategic decision-making processes.

For example, the Beef Checkoff Program, its committees and its contracting organizations use pieces of the long-range plan as their guidebook. All funding decisions and focus areas of checkoff projects and programs, by design, must follow the key areas outlined in the plan that align with checkoff budget categories: promotion, research, consumer information, industry information, producer communication and foreign marketing. To ensure this focus, checkoff committees renew their alignment each year by identifying key plan initiatives as their priorities based on current industry needs. Checkoff contractors take this direction and develop checkoff-funded programs that fall within the scope of the Beef Promotion & Research Act & Order and support the plan’s priorities.