Beef 2024 Report

Beef 2024: US cattle leader in Aus – “We need to work together”

James Nason 13/05/2024

Mark Eisele started out with just four cows and a tractor.

The Cheyenne rancher today runs more than 500 breeding cattle across 25,000 acres of Wyoming high country, where 30-35 mile hour winds are considered just “a gentle breeze”.

He is also the elected president of the powerful National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, directly representing more than 175,000 cattle producers and feeders across the United States.

Like many successful family farming businesses, Mr Eisele’s own ranching story is one founded on self-reliance.

With little initial capital to start with Mark and his family patiently grew their business through renting and leasing, and calculated risk management.

VIDEO: Learn more about NCBA president Mark Eisele and his family’s ranch in Wyoming

“I basically built up without debt, except for some land debt, and learned how to self-suffice on that,” Mr Eisele told an Australian cattle industry audience of 700 people at the Rural Press Club of Queensland breakfast at Beef 2024 in Rockhampton last Thursday.

“I am also a jack of all trades.

“We would do anything that it took to keep that ranch held together – roustabout work, construction work, we moved snow, we built fences – anything we could to generate income and curb the cost of some of our equipment.”

But while self-reliance and independence may be a cornerstone of successful cattle production businesses, there has never been a more important time for producers and ranchers from both countries to work together, Mr Eisele told last week’s audience.

“We’re competitors, we know that,” he said. “We’re strong willed, independent-minded.

“But we’re also colleagues.

“We need to get past some of the things that divide.

“What I think our real adversary, who our real enemy in this, are the animal activists and the anti-agricultural activists.”

Such groups in the US include the Humane Society of the US and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Kerry Lonergan interviewing Garry Edwards and Mark Eisele.

“They run these amazing ads that tug at your heart strings, here is the cat and the dog in the cold and the rain and they’re starving.

“Those people collectively have raised $600 million –  let that sink in – $600 million to use against us.”

That funding was channelled through various law firms, offshore accounts, different entities and foundations, and was used in many different ways to attempt to disrupt livestock production.

“They do all kinds of things – misinformation, sabotage, and we think, they have been involved in the spread of avian influenzas in America.

“We’ve got information that they may have moved wild ducks that were infected into those areas.”

Mr Eisele also expressed concern about anti-livestock sector policies emerging in Europe which threatened food security in the region.

“I am deeply offended by and hurt by how the European Union behaves,” he said.

“They went through a couple of generations where they were basically starving –

World War I, World War II, calamities in between – and now a younger generation has forgot that message and they’re promoting anti agriculture, promoting anti-beef.

“And they have put up imaginary trade barriers that are in their mind are great but they’re imaginary. They are just harmful and they are injuring the very hand that feeds them, I believe that to my very core.”

Mr Eisele and chair of Cattle Australia Garry Edwards signed a joint statement of priorities at the Rural Press Club of Queensland breakfast to work together on key issues impacting cattle producers in both countries, including livestock traceability, sustainability and addressing the emergence of lab-grown proteins.

“We need more interaction with the public,” Mr Eisele said.

“People don’t understand us, there is a diconnect as to what we do and how we do it, and I don’t think they realise how closely their lives are actualy intertwined and dependent on what we do.”

Last week’s visit to Austrtalia at the invitation of the Rural Press Club of Queensland was Mr Eisele’s first to Australia, and he said he plans to be back.

“What an amazing country, and I will be back to to explore and see some more of it.

“It is delifght to be here, this is an amazing event, you guys should be extremely proud.”

 

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