Wesley Grau Elected Chairman of the Cattlemen's Beef Board
Adapted from news release provided by CBB.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Feb. 4, 2012) — Cow-calf and seedstock producer Wesley Grau from Grady, N.M., was re-elected by fellow Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board (CBB) members to serve as chairman in 2012, after fulfilling a partial term at the helm in 2011. The vote came Feb. 4 during the 2012 Cattle Industry Annual Convention in Nashville, Tenn.
Grau was born in New Mexico and traces his cattle-business beginnings to 1960 when, at the age of 9, his father let him start raising show steers. He earned enough money from his show steers to start at New Mexico State University in the fall of 1969, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in agriculture economics.
In 1906, Grau’s grandfather homesteaded on the place where Grau currently resides. His family has accumulated land and grown the ranch to the size it is now. Today, Grau and his brother, Lane, operate Grau Charolais Ranch, where their primary business is genetics.
Grau started 2011 as vice chairman of the CBB, then finished out a partial term as chairman beginning in August.
“I love to have things run correctly,” Grau said as he began his full-year term. “There are right ways and wrong ways to live in this world, and my intentions when I became a Beef Board member were to make sure our producers’ money was spent correctly and to make sure we were getting the most mileage out of every dollar being invested.
“I am a peacemaker by heart,” he continued. “I love to bring people together and love to have a general consensus on issues.”
Given the pre-1985 decline in per capita beef consumption, increasing environmental pressure on beef producers, and the BSE scare of 2003, Grau said had the checkoff not been in existence, he and some of his fellow beef producers may not currently be in the beef business.
“We’ve got millions of acres in the U.S. that cannot be utilized for food for humans except by cattle or some sort of livestock. And they’re not making any more land,” Grau said. “So we’ve got to remember the good things our checkoff does, researching and promoting the nutritional benefits of beef to today’s consumer, about our more than 29 lean cuts of beef, and about the fact that beef is one of the best brain nutrients that we have.”
For more information about your beef checkoff investment, visit www.mybeefcheckoff.com.
-------------------------
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a news release provided by CBB.