Executive Edge Josh St. Peters, Illinois Beef Association Executive Vice President The Illinois cattle industry thrives on a network of more than 16,000 hard-working beef producers – a close-knit collective of families, friends and neighbors who all share a purpose in one of the most challenging and rewarding businesses I have come across. As I begin my work as Executive Vice President here at Illinois Beef Association, I am both humbled and honored by the opportunity to help direct the work advocating on behalf of each member of this patchwork. I appreciate this position as both a privilege and a challenge, working to bolster support for Illinois’ beef and for the people who produce it. Thank you to all of you who have reached out in recent weeks, during my first days on the job. I have enjoyed the chance to connect, by phone and by e-mail, and even in-person at the Expo events in Macomb and Peoria. Your support and input have been appreciated, as I forge ahead with our board leaders and staff on this journey to grow Illinois’ beef industry organization. While at the recent Expo sales in western Illinois, I was able to connect with a number of our accomplished seedstock producers from across the state. A little further in your reading of this issue, you can see the results of their efforts (with added thanks to a tremendous turnout of top-notch buyers). If you had the chance to see these sales in-person or online, it was a great reminder of how our industry can come together when facing adversity. Over the last year we have certainly learned that a pandemic can do a lot to impact society, but it could not stop some of our state’s best cattlemen from putting together a pair of stellar sales. Thank you to the Lowderman family and their staff for the exceptional hospitality at the Illinois Beef Expo sales, as well. Their facility offered a great site for these sales and made it possible for the traditions of the Illinois Performance Tested Bull Sale and the Mid-America Simmental Sale to continue in 2021. Speaking of changes we successfully navigated, congratulations to all of the exhibitors at our recent Illinois Beef Expo junior shows in Peoria. The families who presented cattle put on a wonderful display of one aspect that makes our industry so exciting: it’s our future. We had hundreds of youth from across the state, and even outside of Illinois this year, who exhibited during our Saturday and Sunday show at the Expo Gardens. The showmanship of this group is always stellar, but I am always amazed by how well our young people represent us at this event. As a parent of three junior members myself, I am so proud of the future producers and advocates we are developing through Illinois’ investments in our youth programs. You will see coverage of the shows, with photos and results, in our next issue of Illinois Beef magazine. Printing deadlines complicated our ability to get it all into this magazine, but you can also go online to our social media 8
Illinois Beef - March/April 2021
pages and the IBA website for more details. This junior show was another example of people coming together to make sure that our kids would still be able to have a great event despite the social challenges, and they were certainly successful. I would like to commend the Illinois Beef Expo board of directors for all of the time spent planning for this event; behind the scenes they did a tremendous amount of work to make the junior shows possible this year. Three colleagues also went above-and-beyond to coordinate, setup and direct the show and tradeshow in Peoria: Ashley Beutke, Cori Malone and Mareah Volk put in a lot of hours to plan and prepare, and their work was key to successfully moving this year’s show from the Illinois State Fairground in Springfield to the 2021 site in Peoria. These ladies are true professionals at how they pull together to work, and their efforts should be celebrated. All of our February and March events have certainly made for an exciting time to get started in the role, but I have appreciated the chance to connect with so many of you through the sales and shows and I look forward to spending more time across the state at other events, with our regional affiliates or in your counties or even on your operations. Please reach out when there is an opportunity for IBA to be present in your community; I am eager to be out with our membership, and the rest of the staff is willing to lend their support in whatever way they can, too. As I have reflected on these early days out with members, the conversations have centered around the legacy of the Association, and the important role we play in representing such a diverse group of interests within the industry. I have shared with the board and the staff the vision I maintain that we have a big tent to hold up, and there is room for everyone in Illinois’ cattle industry under here. Planning for the months ahead, I am working with our leaders on both the promotion and policy division boards to ensure our programming meets the needs of everyone in the business. I have also been working with the staff to understand their individual jobs, and how they can continue their teamwork to deliver on the objectives of our mission. This work centers around five approaches that I think can bring strong results for us in the cattle industry, and across all of Illinois agriculture. At IBA, I want our team to excel at these efforts in how we represent our membership: Be clear in our communication. Advocacy is at the heart of why we are here, and that requires precision in how we tell the beef story – to consumers, to policy makers, and among our own shared interests. We need to be constantly communicating among these groups, but we need to do it in
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