Beef Ambassador

Beef lovers, industry leaders, and advocates,
I must apologize for my absence from here for the past few weeks. Life as an involved double major pre vet college student, Beef Ambassador, Colorado State University Ag Ambassador, and cattle owner have kept me very busy. Over the past few weeks, the team has been spending time researching what colleges across the country would benefit from an education in beef and the nutritional benefits of it. While researching, some of the information that we came across scared us, to be frank. Looking at schools in my home state, California, I found that UCLA was ranked by PETA to be the number one vegan-friendly school in the nation. Arika’s research showed that NYU was ranked by PETA to be the number two most vegan friendly school in the nation. Even an ag school like the University of Florida has the strongest animal rights and on campus vegan group according to PETA and they host a “Veg Fest” every year. It is so easy for students to start living a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle while in college. From my personal experience, I’ve noticed how active animal rights groups are. Even on a campus like CSU that was founded around agriculture (and was previously Colorado A&M), there are group meetings promoting vegetarian diets and watching movies such as Food Inc. As college students, we are at an extremely impressionable stage in our lives, and the most active promotion group wins. We need help educating people on the nutritional benefits of beef, we need to be more capable of mobilizing the youth than PETA and HSUS, we need to truly be beef advocates. The beef industry needs to be sure that it has a future in the upcoming generation. So over the next year, the Beef Ambassador Team will be out doing our best to educate the public and be the bigger promotion group on campus.

I’ll be giving updates on our final campus decisions and how our education efforts are going over the next few months.

Night everyone
– Kim

I spent a good portion of last week driving half-way across the country. With that much time on your hands, there is a lot of time to think. One thing that always comes to mind is current events and how people react to what is going on in the world. I often find myself at the question, “How could someone possibly think that?” This is a question I am sure that producers and ag advocates alike often find themselves thinking.

A very "Blessed Paradigm"

One of the greatest things that I learned from the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is the idea of paradigms, or the way that one sees the world. As members of the agriculture industry, we are so blessed in the paradigm that we live in. When someone approaches us with a question or a view point, we must realize that their paradigm is entirely different than ours. While this idea seems so obvious, it is also so easy to forget. Sometimes we have to step out of our favorite pair of broken-in work boots and take a walk in that businessman’s dress shoes or that fashionista’s designer heels. They haven’t had the opportunities that a member of the agriculture field has. Their horizon may be a city skyline instead of rolling hills. Their biggest commitment after school may be their XBox, not their livestock.  So while playing the biggest role that agriculture has, educating the public, (aside from…you know…feeding, clothing, and employing the world), keep in mind that their questions are not unintelligent, but simply come from a different paradigm.

Loving the Ag Paradigm

– Kim

After reading the “good bye” blogs of this past years team it is so hard to get in a mindset of writing something serious and factual! However, this holiday season

A screen shot of the Beef Market Central off of my iPhone

I started thinking about the New Year, and with a new year comes change. Change in perspective, change in our day to day lives, but most of all, the kind of change called progress. I really wanted to comment on progress, particularly technology. Its hard to wrap my head around how much technology influences our lives. We’ve all heard thousands of times how great technology is and how much it can do, but seeing the possibilities with your own eyes changes how you hear those lines. This year my brother, one of the most technologically challenged people that I know, got an iPhone. I personally thought that it was a relationship that would end soon, but he became attached quite quickly and started figuring out all of the features. Within 15 minutes of owning the phone, he had found and downloaded an app called “Beef Market Central”. I personally had never heard of it, but the features on this app are pretty cool! He learned that you can follow the markets of beef in the auction ring, price of beef per pound (broken down by cut), and also you can follow links to articles on critical issues for the beef industry. I was blown away. Someone as opposed to technology as my brother had found such a stockpile of information so quickly. Seeing that really did open my eyes to the endless possibilities of technology and how it can enhance agriculture, particularly my favorite sector, the beef industry. I then started running through what amazing technology is out RIGHT NOW. We’ve all seen a huge surge in technology already with video sales, ultrasound inspections in beef processing plants, and electronics available for the average rancher. For example, a company makes an electronic ear tag for cattle that can store information such as birth date, what vaccinations it received and when, and health history. These tags can be read as a group from a distance with a small scanner, saving time and labor. Feed companies use similar tags as well as videos to monitor the health of their animals constantly, keeping a better eye on them than solely hand checking every yard. This tags can also be used as a personal access key for cattle too, their particular ear tag matches up to a certain feed bunker that opens for them. This allows the feed company to gather more accurate calculations for measuring conversion ratios of cattle and the efficiency of their product. These are only a shallow surface to the amount of technology that the beef industry has at its finger tips. I have always considered myself a really traditional kind of person, and tradition means a lot to me, as I’m sure it does for most ranchers like me. I know that this much technology can seem overwhelming, or like it is taking over the jobs of the average rancher, but being able to feed an ever growing world population is our goal. I just want to send out a line for farmers and ranchers to keep their minds open to the technologies that present themselves. Not all change is bad change.

– Kim Rounds

Hi there beef industry members, lovers, and followers. My name is Kim Rounds and I am so excited to be a member of the 2012 National Beef Ambassador team. I hail from a small town in Northern California. I am currently attending Colorado State University at Fort Collins, and I am pursuing a major in both Animal and Equine Science. Both of these subjects are strong passions of mine that stem from a life growing up raising cattle and horses.

My beef experience began around the time that I was seven. My dad grew up working on his uncle’s ranch and wanted his children to have the same opportunity, and I couldn’t imagine where my life would be if he hadn’t purchased those four ornery Chi Angus heifers. My weekends were spent feeding, walking fence lines, fixing corrals, and cleaning the barn. As our operation expanded to more acreage and more cattle, my love for the industry grew with it. As I slowly submerged myself into the industry outside of just what my father had started, a whole new world opened up for me. I started showing steers for the county fair, and then purchased my own show heifers. My addiction to the cattle industry, every aspect of it, is what brings me here today. I have always had a passion for promoting agriculture, particularly beef, and that is what prompted me to pursue the position of County Beef Ambassador. After proceeding through the county and state levels of competition, I was honored with the position as a member of the 2012 National Beef Ambassador Team.

I am so excited to see what this year brings, meet the wonderful people who make this country’s beef industry run, and most importantly, to spread the word of delicious, nutritious beef! As the year goes on, I hope to be able to convey to everyone how amazing this program is. I want to share my adventures, the information that I learn, but most importantly, I want to promote and give back to the industry that has given me so many opportunities. Always feel free to approach me via social media or any other mode of communication that this new technological age has come up with!

You’ll be hearing from me soon!

- Kim