Agricultural News
Oklahoman Continues Contribution to Phenomenal Success of the Angus Breed
Fri, 07 Feb 2014 13:00:35 CST
John Pfeiffer from Mulhall, Oklahoma, has been re-elected to a second three-year term on the American Angus Association board. Pfeiffer is also on the board of directors with Certified Angus Beef. Radio Oklahoma Network's Ron Hays caught up with him at this week's Cattle Industry Convention in Nashville, Tenn., and they talked about the phenomenal success now being enjoyed by the Angus breed. (You can listen to the full interview by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story.)
"Everybody likes to talk about our overnight success," Pfeiffer jokes. "They just don't realize the 22 years-actually this is our 35th year-so they don't talk about the first 15 years that things didn't go very well.
"We set another record year in sales. We're beginning to talk now about a billion pounds by, maybe, 2016. And, if things continue the way they are, and the certification traits stay the way they are, we think it's a real possibility as demand for the product continues to grow."
As beef supplies tightened, Pfeiffer said one of the greatest concerns was would there be enough Angus cattle to satisfy demand. He said producers have jumped in to fill that demand and certifications have increased more than 10 percent in the last five years.
Pfeiffer, who is a seed-stock provider himself, says the Angus certification not only increases the value of each bull he sells, but it also makes them easier to sell.
"I hate to think of what our bull market would be at the present time had CAB not accomplished what it did. We're able to move calving-ease bulls at decent, profitable prices with a lot of ease. And if we look at our competitors that don't have those advantages, they're not able to move those bulls in that particular realm as easily."
With the Angus breed being the largest pure breed by far, Pfeiffer says they are planning to have a stand-alone Angus convention next fall for anyone using Angus genetics.
"We hope to rival the NCBA. We won't be quite that large, but we'll be extremely close. We think it's going to give us a chance by having a stand-alone convention in the central part of the United States to bring more of our commercial producers in and interact with them and make some more contacts with them and let them see how they can benefit by tying to our brand and making things work for them."
Pfeiffer was also a member of the first Oklahoma Agricultural Leadership Program. He credits it for a large measure of his success and for establishing a pattern that others can follow.
"The OALP program has had more to do with me being where I am today than anything that ever happened to me in my life. It changed how I began to look at things. It made me begin to realize that maybe the United States wasn't as all-powerful and totally in the world as what I had thought we had been. And it made me realize that we cannot continue to depend on other people to take care of our business. Because we want to have our business taken care of, we're going to have to do it ourselves. We're going to have to become involved and we're going to have to leave the farm and leave some of the things that we do for days at a time to go and tell our story and support our cause and make sure our legislation gets passed."
Pfeiffer has taken his own advice and is very active with many county-level organizations all the way up to his work on the national level with the CAB and the American Angus Association.
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