NCBA on why cattle advocacy is so strong in the US; staying grassroots is key

That's how the leaders of one of the world's most powerful livestock industry lobby bodies, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in the United States, see it.

In Australia, where a government is shutting down an entire trade in the livestock industry, that should resonate more than anywhere.

But the questioning of farm advocacy value is arguably stronger than ever.

State organisations are ditching membership of national bodies; new breakaway organisations are being formed and in beef, the smaller producer representative groups are showing no plans of coming into the fold of the new Cattle Australia.

This is all against a background of continual warnings, from industry leaders, politicians and corporate communications and lobbying specialists, that splintered voices and messages is a surefire path to destruction.

The NCBA's executive director of government affairs Kent Bacus told ACMAgri the top reason that US cattle producers are members of NCBA is for the work it does in the nation's capital.

He said US cattlemen and women constantly faced challenges from over-regulation.

NCBA has more than 25,000 individual members and 60 state and breed affiliates.

The majority of those ranchers were hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away from government agencies in Washington, DC, Mr Bacus said.

"Every day, we have a team that is reading through bills and regulations, talking to government officials and advocating for our members," he said.

"Raising cattle is a fulltime job and most producers do not have the time to come to DC for all of these meetings. So the NCBA is a continuous presence in the halls of the White House and our Congress."

It was, however, essential advocacy bodies remained grassroots and modern, lest their relevance be challenged, he agreed.

"We are very proud of our grassroots policy process," Mr Bacus said.

"Twice a year, our members come together to vote on policy, which sets our positions on various issues. This sets us apart from other organisations because individual producer members are making the decisions about the direction of our organisation. They debate policy at the local level all the way up to the national level, and every member ultimately has a vote."

He said one of the biggest challenges the US industry faced was ranchers getting close to retirement without the same number of young producers coming through to take over ranches.

"There is a shortage of young people excited about careers in agriculture. NCBA has made this a focus. We work closely with our US land-grant universities that are educating students on agriculture, we support students through scholarship programs and we offer producer education resources."

Cattle Australia says solid ground has been made in Canberra in recent times which should stand the beef industry in good stead to deal with big issues going forward.

Speaking at Beef Australia this year, CA chairman Garry Edwards said the way the disruption of Indonesia suspending live cattle trade facilities in northern Australia was handled late last year set a new precedent.

"Fundamentally, it was industry relationships that brought the two governments together to work through some pragmatic outcomes," he said.

There was far more industry representation involved than most people realised, he said.

"To have a government agency engage with an industry and then go and enact what was collaboratively determined was an incredibly positive step," Mr Edwards said.

"The reality was that challenge brought industry together and there was a lot of learnings out of that process that have now been adopted and entrenched in the system.

"That will set us up better to deal with issues, whether they are international or domestic, that starts off with not assuming we are all guilty of something but actually goes immediately to 'let's understand the facts, let's collaborate, let's take in information and let's work to get an outcome for betterment of industry'.

"It's been a long time since that sort of proactiveness has occurred."

Cattle Australia's chief executive officer Chris Parker, who at the time of that event was a senior government official, agreed.

"In 40 years of working in agriculture in various roles I've never seen an industry come together quite like it did during this event," he said.

"It was a complete joy to have industry speaking with one voice."