By Robert Pore
robert.pore@theindependent.com

But several speakers on Wednesday at the Governor's Ag Conference in Kearney told producers they must seize the agenda, along with opportunities involving consumer trends to create new dollars in farm communities.

Nearly 300 producers and agricultural industry officials attended the 20th annual Governor's Ag Conference.

One of the morning speakers was Matt Sutton-Vermeulen of the Center for Food Integrity.

Sutton-Vermeulen noted last year's record beef recalls because of E. coli contamination and this year's recall of 143 million pounds of ground beef because workers broke rules that prevent sick animals from entering the food supply. In light of the controversy that has engulfed the beef industry, he said, producers must be proactive and take responsibility for rebuilding consumer trust and confidence in their food supply.

"We are good people in our hearts and souls, and that is what we need to leverage," Sutton-Vermeulen said.

Unfortunately, he said, the industry has allowed other activist groups, such as PETA, to seize the agenda and portray the industry in a negative light.

"But our first and foremost obligation is feeding people, and that is going to become nothing but more important every single day that goes by with the billions of people who are added every year to the population," Sutton-Vermeulen said.

With the challenge facing the agricultural industry, he said, producers need to continue seeking better efficiencies in their operations but also maintain their ethics in their responsibilities to feed humankind.

"We have to be grounded in science and make sure that we continue to advance science and innovations, but we also have to be able to take advantage of that based on good, sound ethical principles," Sutton-Vermeulen said.

Sutton-Vermeulen's key message to his audience on Wednesday was, "We have to become more transparent in who we are and what we are doing and maintain our grounding in good ethical principles, continue to adopt innovations that are in the best interest of feeding the population and feeding them good, healthy and safe food.

"When we have an opportunity to put a face on food production, we have an obligation to do it," he said.

But that's a monumental task when less than 1.5 percent of the population of the United States is involved in food production, Sutton-Vermeulen said.

"And we have to do it based on who we are and what is guiding us," he said.

The other keynote morning speaker was John Huston, executive vice president emeritus of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Huston said that, despite all the controversy surrounding the beef industry, polls conducted by the NCBA indicated that U.S. consumer confidence in the safety of the nation's beef supply remains at more than 90 percent.

"But you can't sit on the sidelines and think that these thing don't turn, because they do," Huston said.

For example, the recent recall of 143 million pound of ground beef by a West Coast processor got "tremendous play in the press," he said.

"Those kinds of things have to erode confidence and trust in our production," Huston said. "But, in total, the industry still has a high level of trust with consumers."

Huston said Nebraska has a huge stake in the beef industry and producers here need to look at consumer trends as an "opportunity to develop new products and to profit rather than looking at it from an negative standpoint, wishing it all will go away."

"Because it won't," he said.

Huston said that, despite higher livestock feed costs as a result of corn-to-ethanol demand, the beef industry can learn from the tremendous success of the corn industry on its efforts of finding new dollars by increasing demand.

Corn prices have jumped from $2 per bushel two years ago to more than $5 per bushel this year because of corn demand for the ethanol industry.

Huston said consumer trends offer opportunity with the right perspective. Because of higher gas prices and this country's increasing dependency on foreign oil to meet its growing energy needs, the corn industry used its clout to jump on the alternative-fuel bandwagon in a big way.

"I have never seen the kind of new uses for the traditional commodities as we see today creating new dollars in our farming communities," Huston said. "That's because we have met a consumer need. If we are going to create new dollars, whether it's beef or corn, it's going to have to come from the end user, or otherwise you are just trading dollars back and forth in the system."