Iowa’s farmers are entering one of their busiest times of year, with fair season and the harvest coming up. The Iowa Beef Industry Council just wrapped up its summer series of training seminars and the council’s Brian Waddingham says the training’s taking a break too, till fall arrives. He points out checkoff money pays for the Beef Quality Assurance Program, and will continue after a Supreme Court Ruling earlier this year declared the checkoff will continue. There’s also an Iowa checkoff that assesses 50-cents a head, so even if the national checkoff had been struck down there’d have been some funding. He says the group’s promotion work gets a lot of the credit for raising beef demand by 25-percent since 1998. Waddingham says there are lots of state programs in place to help keep their beef promotion work from ending. The Council’s still looking ahead to the future, he says, and continues to update the program as need be to suit producers. There are about four-thousand cattle producers around Iowa now who are “BQA Certified.” Waddingham says the Beef Industry Council plans for now to resume the seminars in September.
Iowa's Radio News Network
