Wed, 07 Sep 2022 09:37:07 CDT
Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, is talking with international consultant, PJ Budler, about making Cattlemen’s Congress the premier destination for international cattle producers.
The pandemic made international travel to the United States very difficult for the first year of Cattlemen’s Congress. Cattlemen’s Congress 2022 had more volume of international travelers, but for 2023, Budler says the sky is the limit.
PJ Budler originally from South Africa, now living in the Fort Worth area, says he is working closely with Cattlemen’s Congress to make it the destination for cattle producers traveling from outside of our country to the United States.
“The first thing is the scale of it,” Budler said. “I believe this is going to grow as the Bos Indicus start to be incorporated and the ideas of bringing some commercial heifers in to have a show and sale at the end of the event and those type of things- the scale of it is unprecedented- there isn’t a cattle event in the world with that many head of cattle in it.”
Budler said he sees almost all the British and European Associations and the Bos Indicus Associations calling Cattlemen’s Congress home of the most prestigious and premier show and event within the U.S. soon enough.
“If someone is in Australia or down in Argentina or the UK and they want to come to the U.S to see cattle, the logical place to go is to the premier event, and that’s what is going to set the Cattlemen’s Congress apart from all its contemporaries,” Budler said.
To get all the traffic, Budler said you have to be the premier event.
Part of what sets major shows apart in terms of hosting international groups, Budler said, is the hospitality. Show such as the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, he added, focus heavily on hospitality to foreign guests, which makes it a welcoming place for foreign travelers.
“People from different countries tend to do business where they feel welcome and they feel celebrated,” Budler said. “Some other major U.S. shows in the past that maybe have been guilty of ignoring a foreign presence- the incentive to come back is lost. I have seen this work so well in Houston where a lot of those breed auctions are bilingual now because of how big the foreign component is.”
Keeping these factors in mind, Budler said Cattlemen’s Congress can make it happen.
“There is no reason why a show like Cattlemen’s Congress shouldn’t get to that point, considering the scale of the cattle industry, especially with the breeds that are represented at the Cattlemen’s Congress,” Budler said.
To hear Ron and PJ’s full conversation and listen to their podcast, courtesy of Cattlemen’s Congress, click here.
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