Joe Lewis

The beef industry will face a wide range of challenges in the coming years. A lot of the challenges we face today will likely be continued. In my opinion these challenges include:

• The inflation of input costs continues to be a problem.
• Consumer perception of our industry and practices.
• Entrance costs for new operations along with lack of opportunity for first time beef producers to get started on an operation. These small ranches that would be ideal for someone to get started into their first ranch get bought up by a big outfit or bought by some out of state person or group and used solely for recreation and gets taken out of production as a result.
• Rising land prices and fighting against the elite buying our agriculture land for recreation purposes.
• Loss of agriculture land to the energy sector via wind and solar power farms. I also think we will face challenges with these for decommissioning them once the company that put them up is gone.
• The sale of federal land has potential to be a major challenge for livestock producers as many of us rely on BLM grazing.
• Succession of family operations to remain family operations will continue to be a challenge for producers.
• Labor shortage will continue to be a problem going forward as well as adjusting to using new technologies in livestock production.
• Animal health will continue to be an issue with new diseases and less effective medicines.
• Resisting vertical integration of the beef industry
• Greenhouse gas emissions of livestock and the push from groups against animal agriculture because of it.
• Natural resource allocation, mainly water that we fight to have for production
• Expanding into more export markets for the beef industry
• Political uncertainty with both parties getting more polarized leads to more uncertainty with new administrations both local and federal.