State Checkoff budget reflective of economy

TSCRA Daily News Update, Sept. 4, 2008

State Checkoff budget reflective of economy

As prices for fuel and feed continue to rise, producers feel the pinch on their operations. While they review costs, outputs and effective ways to manage the herd, their marketing organization, the Beef Checkoff, is also forced to lower budgets and look to creative ways to leverage checkoff dollars.

"It's a challenge to make budget cuts while maintaining the effectiveness of the checkoff here in Texas," said Crawford Edwards, cow-calf producer from Fort Worth who will serve as Chair of the Texas Beef Council (TBC) board next year.

"We were faced with difficult decisions throughout the budgeting process but our checkoff leaders, committee members and staff developed strategies for investing checkoff dollars in the most efficient manner possible for 2009," Edwards explained.

Following a lengthy budgeting process, the TBC board of directors approved a $6.36 million checkoff program budget for fiscal 2009 that includes beef advertising, marketing, nutrition outreach, promotions at consumer events and in retail, export efforts, foodservice communications and more.

The new budget reflects a $490,000 decrease from last year.

After evaluating revenue projections and considering potential economic factors, the TBC Audit and Budget committee established overall budget guidelines and the TBC Executive committee made recommendations on voluntary investment to national program efforts. TBC staff then prepared and presented preliminary marketing plans reflecting the proposed budget to their committees in June to consider and recommend.

The 2009 budget for TBC, which administers the Beef Checkoff Program on a state level, was approved by the 20-member board of directors representing beef producers across Texas and will be implemented Oct. 1.

On the national level, the Cattlemen's Beef Board (CBB) has approved a checkoff program budget of $45.8 million, a sharp decrease from the $49 million budget for fiscal 2008.

"With checkoff collections significantly down again, leveraging checkoff dollars is more important now than ever," said Richard Wortham, TBC executive vice president. "TBC works very hard to partner and align ourselves with retail and foodservice companies and beef industry organizations that are willing to contribute to our demand-building programs in efforts to stretch the checkoff dollar as far as possible."

For more information on the Beef Checkoff, please visit www.texasbeef.org or call 800/846-4113.