There’s a story my Dad was fond to repeat when I was growing up. It was about a local guy, taking a load of fat cattle on an old stake bed truck into the packing plant located near downtown Des Moines. It was a nice day. Folks had their windows rolled down, and this would prove to be unfortunate for the poor woman, parked in the lane beside him at a stoplight, when a steer in the back lifted his tail, shot through the slat side, and right into her open window.

She was disgusted. The driver was undeterred. “Don’t worry ma’am,” he is said to have remarked. “It’s only grass and water.”

I suppose the beef community has always had its advocates. In the decades that have passed, the story has become more layered, our connection to consumers has become a little less personal yet more developed, and our advocates have become more skilled in communicating the story behind the product they raise. Still, sometimes all of those things have to face some pretty strong headwinds.

This has become increasingly evident this spring. Robust demand for our product and the good price consumers are willing to pay for it isn’t translating to higher prices on the farm. While this issue commands the most attention, it isn’t alone. Feed and input prices are rapidly climbing, dryness in some areas is expanding, and the forecast for the summer ahead is full of as much uncertainty as I can recall.

On some issues we face and of some remedies proposed there seems to be consensus within our community, and on some we find disagreement. Farmers, ranchers, and feeders want to know what anyone is doing about finding a solution, what efforts are working, and which are not. They are frustrated, and it couldn’t be more understandable.

Against this back drop, one morning on the farm, I found a month old calf with her leg tangled in three strands of a new barbed wire fence and her mother waiting anxiously beside her. The new wire was so tight, I couldn’t release her until I ran back to the farm, grabbed the wire cutters, and cut her free.

The wire had tore to the bone on both sides of her leg. The local veterinarian took care to clearly spell out that her chances were slim. Yet even against the backdrop described above, there was no debate about how we were going to proceed. We gave her the best care we possibly could.

As a producer, I need favorable economics to survive. It seems like a big hill to climb right now. Yet across the valley of this current spring is another peak, I think of equal height, about who we were, and why we do what we do. These two, on our farm, have to work together. Your Beef Checkoff works on both.

That’s hard to remember sometimes, specifically because strong demand and a good price from consumers are things we would like to point to as something enhanced by checkoff efforts. I understand the obvious concern raised when not as much of that price is making its way back to the farm as we would like. An uncomfortable question we might ask ourselves is where we would be without that demand and without that sense of value consumers feel they get from our product.

I’d like to think a remedy can be found in governmental policy or the enforcement of law, but neither are in the arena the checkoff is allowed to operate in. Against this backdrop, we sometimes lose sight of all it can do.

I have a good friend who is a photographer, well known in Iowa agriculture and beyond for his work. He knows how to select the right equipment, catch the right light, and how to position himself at the right angle. He also knows how to capture images that resonate with folks. About the latter, he knows two secrets we as producers too frequently miss. Or if you don’t, I do.

The first secret is about the power of the images he is capturing. It connects folks outside the agricultural community to a story they want to know and be part of. That connection coveys a sense of trust that facts and figures need to be piled tenfold to equal. The value of that trust would be difficult to measure. The second secret he knows is where to find these moments.

He knows that in our everyday work, the images he’s looking for, the ones that resonate with the consumer, abound. To capture them, all he has to do is spend a little time with us as we do the work we often take for granted, because it needs to be done. In our daily work, we are stewards of our cattle, stewards of our land, stewards of our family and our local communities. Nothing offers you a chance to be the steward of your own story as a beef producer like the Beef Checkoff does.

Other industries are envious of the story our community has. They should be. Over their mountains of facts and figures that glaze your eyes over, stands one rancher watching their cattle graze on a beautiful day or pulling a newborn calf out of the mud.

I’m not aware of anything as dedicated to refining and discovering the value of our daily story as the efforts of the checkoff. I know of no venue that brings our story to such a wide audience, nor offers to producers such an opportunity to take part in shaping how that story is told. I know of no vehicle that delivers that story not dependent on characters and scripts, but with our own lips conveying the true essence of who we are and why we do what we do.

As a producer, I don’t want us to take it for granted. We need the ability to tell our story, and we need to keep telling it, in good times and challenging ones, with any effective means at our disposal, save perhaps stake bed trucks and open windows.