The next president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is looking forward to his tenure. He will take office at the Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show in early February.
Buck Wehrbein was born and raised on a small farm in eastern Nebraska and later lived in the Texas panhandle. He’s been back in his home state for the last two decades.
“My one grandfather was a cattle feeder. The other was a dairy farmer,” he said. “So, [I’ve] been around bovine my whole life, and then in order to get back into the business as an adult, my wife and I moved down to the Texas panhandle in 1979 and went to work at a big feed lot.”
He’s still in the feeding business and is no stranger to being involved in beef organizations. Wehrbein has been on a number of boards, both in Nebraska and Texas, as well as nationally. Even with his experience in different groups, he sees his new role as an important one.
“I was fortunate to be mentored by really good association people,” he said. “I don’t see this as lay leadership running these organizations. It really, truly is leadership and not management. You leave that to the staff.”
Wehrbein sees a couple of priorities that need to be focused on during his term, but he expects many to be “dropped into his path.”
“In other words, who planned on having new world screw worm as an issue this year?” he said. “And here it is, right in front of us.”
The farm bill is another area that needs attention, he said.
“We got a really, really good farm bill out of the house, and they refused to deal with it in the Senate,” Wehrbein said. “That’s going to be front and center on what we try and do.”
Other items on his radar include the foot-and-mouth disease vaccine bank, tax cuts and the jobs act. On the NCBA side, Wehrbein has his eye on a couple of issues, too.
“We’ve been following a long-range plan since 1995. Every five years that’s being rewritten, and we should get that rolled out at the summer meeting in San Diego,” he said. Afterward, he said, the association will draft a strategic plan based on it that guides policy staff.
With his background, Wehrbein said he has learned how cattlemen in Texas and the Midwest think.
“They’re very similar, but they’re not the same, and I think that’s a strength,” he said. “I am not well versed in running a ranch with cows and calves, and I would say, if I have a weak area, that’s it.”
Wehrbein said he believes understanding the whole supply chain in the cattle business will help his tenure be successful. He sees a need for educating producers and members about that process so that, when there are market corrections, they understand what is happening and can more easily remain positive.
“Suddenly, with these high prices, the market isn’t broken, but one of these days, we’ll top out, and we’ll go down, and then they’ll be broke again,” Wehrbein said. “I think if people can understand the whole process better and how the market works, that we might be able to tamp that down.”
The big emotional response that comes with big market corrections stems from “not really understanding how the whole market works,” he said.
“I’m very bullish on the cattle business,” he said. “We are going through a period here where, if we weren’t making the cattle so big, we would really be short. But because the market is telling us to and through genetics and technology and animal husbandry and inroads that we’ve made, we’re able to make these cattle bigger than any of us thought we could.”
There’s more beef than the amount of cattle would say, according to Wehrbein. Cattle producers have learned to make more with less, and with fewer resources than ever before.
“Those are all strong points. They may not all be understood by the rank and file and the public out there, but it’s still true, and we keep building on information that the checkoff has provided through research,” he said.
It’s turned into “such a success story” over the years, and for the cattle feeder, he believes as the middle class grows and people are making more money, they’re going to eat more and better protein.
“There’s good beef produced all over the world, but not the amount that we have and not the quality we have,” he said. “So that all just makes me very bullish.”
He also enjoys doing business in the cattle industry.
“I’m in this business because I like the people,” he said. “I like our employees. I like our customers. I like the feed salesmen. I like buyers. And I just like the people that are involved in this business. And I like the cattle themselves. I like being able to reach out and touch them and be around them. Always have.”
Most of all he likes the challenge of it.
“It’s probably a bigger challenge to go to Mars, but this is a big challenge, and so I really enjoy that,” he said.
Wehrbein also encourages members and those in the beef industry to get involved in associations and industry groups.
“We need people with certain attitudes to be involved. We’ve got a lot of talent.,” he said. “I was encouraged all through my career by people that I respected, who were older than I was and had been around, more accomplished, more involved, and that’s why I did it.”
Wehrbein took office at the NCBA convention Feb. 4 to 6 in San Antonio, Texas. Watch for more information in upcoming issues of High Plains Journal.
Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].
