The Kansas Livestock Association wrapped up its yearly convention Friday after swearing in its new president and approving two new policies.<\/p>\n
The event was Wednesday through Saturday at the Manhattan Convention Center and Hilton Garden Inn. Last year, its 130th anniversary, KLA had its convention in Manhattan for the first time.<\/p>\n
Ty Breeden, a 2003 Kansas State University graduate and Quinter, Kansas, native, began his year-long term as KLA president on the final day of the conference. Members selected Jeff George, a cattle feeder from Garden City, as next year\u2019s president-elect.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year was our first year in Manhattan, so we had a really big boost, but we stayed strong this year,\u201d Breeden said. \u201cIt\u2019s great for me to bring my family back here and reconnect with some old friends. So Manhattan has been a good move for KLA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Breeden said the convention will remain in Manhattan next year.<\/p>\n
Troy Sander, 2024-25 KLA president, said this week on Within Reason with Mike Matson that KLA assists its members through policy and national lobbying.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what we try to do is, you know, take all the voices of our members, of our livestock and ag producers across the state, and listen to them, listen to their concerns, listen to their issues,\u201d Sander said. \u201cAnd we take all that, put it together, develop some policy and help them solve those issues or provide support to them \u2014 or perhaps, when there\u2019s lobbying to needs to be done at the state or national level, we have the ability, we have the experience, we have the people in place to do that for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cValue-Based Conservation,\u201d the first policy resolution approved this week, \u201csupports market-based payment rates for participation in voluntary conservation programs.\u201d The policy is intended to combat the loss of intact grasslands in the Great Plains and under-compensation for ranchers who make significant conservation efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, if people want to participate voluntarily in conservation programs, we have policy on the books that if something comes up, that allows our staff to then have a position on that,\u201d Breeden said. \u201cAs stewards of the land, conservation is always a high priority for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through this policy, KLA will support higher technical assistance payment rates and expanded access to private technical service providers associated with programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n
The second policy, \u201cDairy Checkoff,\u201d expresses support for the Dairy Promotion and Research Program (National Dairy Checkoff) and the Kansas Dairy Checkoff. Dairy checkoff programs are industry-funded marketing and research programs that support dairy demand and fund research to benefit dairy farmers.<\/p>\n
The policy requests that administrators of the dairy checkoff programs produce regular reports that are accessible to Kansas dairy producers, allowing them \u201cto understand the financial position of the checkoffs and the effectiveness of checkoff-administered programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also requests the Kansas Dairy Checkoff maintain \u201can efficient, user-friendly refund process\u201d for dairy producers that choose that route.<\/p>\n
KLA has over 5,600 members. Breeden said his goal is to energize the association\u2019s membership base while expanding its reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a tremendous amount of members,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have members from all ages \u2026 I want people to participate. I wish everybody knew how important it was to show up and share what is important to you. If you don\u2019t show up, your voice can\u2019t be heard. I\u2019ve always had an interest in and fondness for Theodore Roosevelt, and there\u2019s a quote that Theodore Roosevelt says that \u2018Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.\u2019 So show up, participate, bring good ideas and bring solutions, and we can make this industry the strongest it\u2019s ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. recently chose to halt imports of feeder cattle from Mexico after confirmed cases of New World screwworm in Central America and Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last year, if you think back to some of the challenges that we\u2019ve had, we\u2019ve worked through announcements of avian influenza, we\u2019ve worked through announcements regarding New World screwworm, we\u2019ve worked through some of the social media comments that have affected the cattle markets,\u201d Breeden said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to continue dealing with those. As far as New World screwworm, that\u2019s going to be an ongoing, ongoing process for several years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Breeden said another challenge often present in agriculture is inaccuracies spread on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cA goal of mine is to start working toward factual, science-based information on all the social media outlets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s Facebook or Twitter, there\u2019s so much noise out there, and I don\u2019t think we want to get down in the weeds where emotions and opinions go back and forth and people have a lot of anger and conflict with each other. We want to make sure that as an association, we\u2019re reaching members how they receive their news, or how they participate with other people on social media. And we want to put out factual information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kansas Livestock Association wrapped up its yearly convention Friday after swearing in its new president and approving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-48235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}