The Beef Checkoff is a program that is funded by charging cattle producers one dollar per animal, every time an animal is sold. The money is supposed to be used for the marketing and research of beef products. Last year a total of $74,718,807 was authorized through the checkoff. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, NCBA, was authorized for $53,118,436. The NCBA is an organization that is supposed to represent everyone involved in beef production, meaning from the cattlemen and women that raise the animals to the beef packers that get rich off of them. What the NCBA actually does is convince cattlemen that nothing should change, and lobby in DC for the packers, to ensure sure nothing changes.

By Jim Mundorf

Last summer, was a summer of depressed cattle prices, and record profits for beef packers. A summer that included multiple Senate hearings on beef packer concentration and market manipulation. After that summer, in August, the NCBA announced that the entire cattle industry would be committing to the goal of, “climate neutrality by the year 2040,” and they weren’t joking. At a time when cattle producers were losing money on every animal they fed, beef packers were making more money than they ever had before, and the demand for beef had never been higher, the goal for the NCBA was…“climate neutrality.”

The reason NCBA can have such tone deaf ideas at such ridiculous times, and not get called out on it, is because they control practically all of agriculture media, and they do so with the dollars that cattlemen are mandated to give them through the Beef Checkoff. The best example of this is after NCBA’s goal announcement, the September 2021 issue of Farm Journal’s Drovers magazine came out. Drovers is a magazine covering the cattle industry and they decided that, the new NCBA goal, deserved the cover story. Well, maybe deserved is exactly the right term.

If you look through the issue you will find a full page ad, a two page centerfold ad, and a half page ad, all promoting the Beef Checkoff. The Beef Checkoff that NCBA controls. This simply makes it painfully obvious that checkoff dollars were used to get NCBA on the cover and promote their agenda of taking attention away from the manipulated cattle market. Pay no attention to the fact that you’re going broke, we have climate neutrality to achieve.

Full page ad costing cattle producers between $12,385- $14,075.

A quick Google search of, “Drovers magazine media kit” will lead you to this page: https://cdn.farmjournal.com/2020-11/Drovers_MediaKit_2021.pdf There you will find that a full page ad costs, depending on how many you buy, anywhere between $12,385- $14,075, a 2 page centerfold between $24,775 and $28,150, and the half page between, $8,670 and $9,855. Magazine rates are usually negotiable, but from the published rates you can figure that cattle producers paid a total of anywhere between, $45,830 and $52,080, of their Beef Checkoff dollars to advertise in one issue of a free magazine that gets sent out to cattle producers whether they want it or not. If spending right around $50 grand to advertise to yourself is a tough one to wrap your head around, imagine spending $1.85 million to advertise to yourself.

Producer Communications

The Checkoff Beef Board is authorized to spend $1.85 million of cattle producers checkoff dollars for, “producer communications.” This money is to be used to, “engage beef community stakeholders in programs that enhance understanding of the Beef Checkoff and the advance of the beef industry.” What that means is they have a $1.85 million dollar advertising campaign fund to tell cattlemen what a great job the checkoff is doing with their money, and if that doesn’t sound sketchy enough, that’s not even what they’re using the money for. In the authorization request it reads, “A strategy for this paid media is to make the ads feel more organic: a paid radio segment that sounds like an interview featuring a board member; a print advertorial or column - written by a producer of our choosing.” “Organic” in this case means, trick readers into thinking the ad isn’t an ad. This is what is done in the two page spread in Drovers. It looks like an article but at the top in small letters it reads, “sponsored content.” And the article portion has nothing to do with, “understanding of the Beef Checkoff,” that was authorized. It doesn’t mention the checkoff once. It is all about raising cattle sustainably, which just so happens to coincide perfectly with the NCBA cover story.

The two page centerfold ad costing producers $24,775- $28,150. If you look close above the barns at the top you can see it reads, “sponsored content.”

What the $1.85 million is used for, is controlling the entire narrative in agriculture media. It is used to make sure that the NCBA is never criticized, that beef packers are never criticized, and to ensure that the message NCBA wants is always the top story. It’s not just Farm Journal and Drovers, it is just that they are the most blatantly obvious. For the last three issues of 2021 the Drovers cover stories continued to follow the NCBA narrative about sustainability. Coming out with three consecutive issues with practically the exact same cover story is so ridiculous its kind of funny, but it’s hard to laugh if you know that your dollars are paying for it.

The truth is the NCBA and their control of the millions of checkoff dollars has a massive influence over all of agriculture. I’d be willing to bet that in the past few months there has been more articles critical of beef packer concentration in the mainstream media than there has been in national ag media. The cattle market and beef packer concentration has been a major news story covered in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and many other major publications.

Ag media is different. A lot of it isn’t created for the reader, listener or viewer. Its created for the corporations that want to get to their message to the producers. Its one thing to take corporate dollars and work to try and get a corporation’s message out there, but what’s even worse is what’s happening here. What’s happening here is that cattlemen’s dollars are being taken and used to try and manipulate them. That’s wrong and they should know about it. Please let them know.

The Beef Checkoff: How Cattlemen's Dollars are Used to Try and Manipulate Them

By Jim Mundorf

Producer Communications

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