Alltech’s Global 500 brought beef producers from across the globe together to network and gather information to take home. During the beef breakout session Bob Sand, founder and CEO of The Beef Connection, shared his vision for being a service organization that enables both beef cattle producers and industry suppliers to prosper and become more sustainable.

The Beef Connection focuses on teaching producers to gather information on their cattle allowing them to make good production, management and marketing decisions. Bob shared with me in an interview how important it is for producers to keep an open mind to new technology.

“The Beef Connection was formed to curate a program for commercial cattle producers. The goal being to connect all the different facets of the beef industry to gather information on cattle; bring it all the way back to the ranch level and let the ranchers make decisions based on data. That’s how we started and then our connections included going to commercial feed yards and packing houses bringing all that data back to the producers.”

“Alltech’s role in this was to bring in the nutritional technology we needed to create those cattle that really perform in the industry.”

Listen to my interview with Bob here: Bob Sand - The Beef Connection

Check out all the photos from this years Global 500 here: 2012 Global 500 Photo Album