September 22, 2020

Canada's beef sector launches national beef strategy for 2030

Canadian Beef Advisors (CBA), a cooperative community made up of national organisations representing the entire beef production chain of Canada, has recently launched its national beef strategy 2030 goals at the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef annual general meeting.

Tyler Bjornson, chair of the CBA, said the vision around the national beef strategy is to support a "dynamic, profitable, Canadian cattle and beef industry."

He added: "We developed a five year strategy for 2020 to 2024, built around the four pillars of beef demand, competitiveness, productivity and connectivity,"

With this latest announcement, the CBA hopes to build on the five-year goals and identify ambitious 10-year goals that provide positive, clear messaging, about the industry's desire to improve practices, their carbon footprint and enhance natural environments in addition to the key economic goals that were set out in the original five-year plan, said Bjornson.

The goals announced at the meeting focus on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration, animal healthcare, and land use and biodiversity.

"Our intent is to tackle four more topics, where additional goals will be rolled out in the spring of 2021 to round out the entire national beef strategy, those topics will be water, beef quality and food safety, people health and safety, and technology," said Bjornson.

Part of the intent of the CBA's goals is to encourage innovation and push the industry to think differently and potentially move out of its comfort zone.

"So when it comes to how do you execute on these, and how do you operationalise these things, two immediate opportunities come to mind. One is that they can be used by the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef to inform the update of their sustainability strategy, given that these three goals fit squarely into that theme. In addition to that, it can also inform the Beef Cattle Research Council's update of their national beef research and extension strategy for 2023 to 2028," said Bjornson.

By having an over-arching beef strategy, the next intent of the goals is to inform the work of individual organisations and partners that make up the entirety of the national beef advisory.

In addition, the CBA thinks that a proactive leadership position is a win, instead of being "dragged into the future." Particularly, in the greenhouse gas emissions dialogue, beef producers play an enormous role in maintaining native grasslands and the land use and biodiversity goal surrounding that very element will help to maintain the 35 million acres of native grassland.

Success in maintaining those acres will be achieved if the focus is on the economic viability of producers and supporting programmes that recognise and incentivise conservation practices, said Bjornson.

- RealAgriculture