I asked National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) President Elect J.D. Alexander some tough questions during the recent Cattle Industry Summer Conference. One such question was, “What is your favorite way to prepare your beef?” His answer – a bone in ribeye prepared on the grill. So I tried it out last night for dinner and boy was it tasty.

OK, so maybe that isn’t really a tough question but Alexander did tell me that the industry is facing some notable legislative issues such as trade issues, GIPSA rules and increasingly difficult environmental standards. So I asked him how does the industry overcome these challenges?

“The bottom line is we’ve got to work together on a state and national level to overcome these issues so we can do better what we do best and that’s producing high quality beef,” said Alexander.

I then asked him if the U.S. continues to create policies that make it more and more difficult to produce beef, how, when countries around the world are depending on U.S. farmers, are we going to keep producing the high quality protein so desperately needed to feed a dramatically growing population?

Alexander replied, “I think one of the things is obviously if they’re trying to do some regulation like that they must have a sense we’re not doing it properly right now. I’ve always said as far as the environment goes, we as producers are living off the environment. We grow the crops to feed to the cattle to grow the protein that can be fed to the nation’s population. So because we make a living off the land, we’re going to take care of the land.”

He continued, “I think part of the message is we’re not getting that message out. One of the greatest stories we have is the environmental stewardship awards. We go out to regions across the country and honor producers that are doing great things with how they are preserving and saving and enhancing the environment. We had seven picked at this conference and out of them one will be a winner.”

And NCBA will continue to showcase these forward-thinking cattle producers to help better tell the industry’s story with the goal of reining in some of these regulations that could keep America’s cattle producers from producing an invaluable product.

You can learn more by listening to my interview with J.D. Alexander: NCBA Helping to Create Export Markets for Cattle Producers

Photos from the conference are posted to this photo album: 2011 Cattle Industry Summer Conference Photo Album.