Behind the scenes beef production!

I was pleased to be able to take a tour of the Colorado State University, Beef Research Ranch this week and saw some of the fruit of 50 years of work!

It started with an overnight stay at the local “mom and pop motel” where I new right away I was going to feel right at home. Booking a room with the nice owners on the phone concluded with the question, “what time do you think will be in?” I responded that it likely would be late. So to make life a little more convenient for everyone they simply told me that I would be staying in room number three and it would be open for me… people who trust people are my kind of people!

Working with Wright Livestock I was able to help market bred heifers developed by CSU and send them to a new home that is excited to take advantage of all that research!

It is so easy to take for granted all of the “behind the scenes” effort, like the research at CSU which helps produce the food we eat.  Realistically even the smallest family farmers depend on a host of other people in order to operate their farm.

Off the top of my head I created a list of folks working together to produce our food.

-Equipment manufactures 

-Parts/supplies retailers

-Seed companies 

-Fuel companies

-Fertilizer companies

-Veterinarians

-Nutritionists

-Feed companies

-Salt mines

-Mineral companies 

-Transportation companies

-Processing facilities

-Marketing companies

-Distribution companies

-Retail Companies

-Clothing/Shoe companies... I’m just considering right now how much less we would get done if we literally had to make our own!

At any rate you get the idea, it takes a lot of cooperative work to put food on the table!

Think for a moment about how easy it is to be impatient when waiting for a good burger to finish being prepared and grilled... when the effort to produce the beef in that burger literally took a small army of people years to produce!

I know a great many of you folks who follow us are involved in the agriculture economy in some way and I also know you don’t always get a lot of appreciation, but I’m saying right now that my family is very grateful for all your work!

Thank you kindly,

Glade Miller Smith