Nov. 20, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information contact:

Crystal Albers, assistant director of communications/web editor, at 816-383-5100 or calbers@angus.org

I Am Angus: A Q&A with Bill Davis

Bill Davis, the newly elected American Angus Association® president, has been in the Angus business ever since he could remember. His parents, Dale and Betty, first introduced registered Angus cattle to the family’s Rollin’ Rock Angus ranch in southwest Montana in 1956.

Bill spent his youth helping build fence and put up hay on the ranch his father named for the bears that emerged from hibernation and rolled large rocks at the foot of the mountains, scavenging for springtime insects.

After graduating from college and working for a commercial cattle operation in California, Davis returned to Montana to begin a new generation on the ranch. In 1973 he purchased the cattle and machinery from his father and eventually moved with his wife, Jennifer, to eastern Montana for expansion. However, the operation’s emphasis on performance has been an unwavering mainstay at Rollin’ Rock. Among the region’s rolling plains and river breaks, the Davis’ continue to encourage the development and enhancement of selection tools and their accuracies.

Known for his jovial demeanor, Bill sat down to answer a few questions about the Angus business, the state of the breed and where we’re headed.

Q: What is the greatest thing about being in the Angus business? In other words, why do you choose to raise Angus cattle?

A: It’s as close as anywhere in the industry to being a problem-free breed. Angus cows will calve on their own, and they will survive in a multitude of different environmental situations. They’ll breed back, and they’ll do it year after year. And the beauty of it is, you have an end product that’s highly demanded by the consuming public today. That’s huge, because sooner or later, everything we have out there ends up on a knife and fork.

When that’s in demand, it makes it a lot easier to market Angus cattle.

The other thing that is great about this breed is its people. Within the beef industry, and especially the Angus business, you can’t go anywhere and find better people.

It’s the cattle and it’s the people. If you’re going to be involved in something positive, something that’s Number 1 and going in the right direction, Angus in the beef industry today is definitely there.

Q: What is our primary advantage over other breeds? How do we maintain that advantage?

A: The Number 1 advantage we’ve got is the positives in the breed — the characteristics I just discussed of not only product quality but the ability to get it there and the people who are behind it. That’s as important as the cattle themselves.

As far as the cattle, we know Angus is in high demand. Just last month, 64% of cattle harvested were black-hided. It didn’t use to be that way. They used to be discriminated against. But during time, it turned completely around because of some of the foresight of people that were in it who looked past the point of their own special interests and looked at what we could do to advance the breed.

Any time we can do something that makes the breed better, it gives every individual within the breed the opportunity to be better.

In our present-day environment, we’ve had to deal with some genetic and economic issues, but people are wanting to put that behind them. I think we’re still dealing with it, but it’s behind us and now we need to go in the other direction. Now let’s look at what’s next and not what we’ve already taken care of. We have that opportunity with new technology, developing science and the largest database in the industry.

We need to be thinking ‘How do we keep Angus in the position we’re in and make the breed even stronger?’

I think we can go that other direction. I think everybody that’s a member has a similar goal — to raise the value of registered Angus cattle.

Even if we don’t all have the exact same idea on how to do that, that long-range goal needs input from all thought processes to get it there. What we need to do to make that happen is to communicate those thought processes. The education and communication of those ideas is how we’re going to continue to go in the same direction, but remain focused on positive change and not what’s behind us. It sounds like a fairy tale approach, but I think it’s absolutely 100% doable and something we need to focus on.

The analogy I’ve used is “You can keep people from scoring on you in a ballgame by having a heck of a defense, but if you don’t have some offense with it, you’re not going to win the game because you’ve got to put points on the board.”

Q: What are our biggest challenges in the year ahead?

A: As a breed, we need to work together, to communicate ideas in a positive, constructive way that advances the Angus breed as a whole. The biggest challenge becomes, ‘How do we get the guy out there who has an idea to relay that? How do we get him to look past what he heard at the coffee shop? How do we do that and get him to look at all the resources we have available today?’

We need to open up those communication lines and start sharing ideas and building our future rather than arguing about the past.

We need to understand why decisions are made from every aspect — from economics to performance programs to youth programs to the Foundation. We need to have some input, but we need to have it done in a positive manner. I’d say that’s even more challenging than complacency.

Q: What are our biggest opportunities?

A: Our biggest challenges are also our biggest opportunities. We must put the membership on the same wavelength.

We all need to look at the bigger picture. We need to look at what’s next and where we need to go. We need to be aware of what’s out there on the horizon for not only the Angus breed, but for agriculture in general. We have some people out there who are antagonistic toward animal agriculture, and we need to look down the road on what we can do to counteract that. We take care of our animals and our environment, because without it, we wouldn’t have our way of life. That’s something the public needs to understand.

Q: The Association has endured the worst economic recession since the Great Depression as well as issues associated with genetic defects. What resources has the Board put into place to alleviate some of these challenges? What steps do you see the Board implementing in the future to meet such challenges?

A: Any kind of a business, and this is a business, has to look at resources from three different aspects. From an Association aspect, when you’re looking at any sort of annual budget shortfall, you have to look at: cutting expenses, creating income and the use of some reserves should that be available. That’s why reserves are there to start with, but they shouldn’t be depleted as quick as you can deplete them.

So you have to look at it from a business standpoint and adjust expenses and income accordingly.

More importantly, in order to make those kinds of decisions you have to analyze all resources and anticipate what’s going to be down the road — not only this week, this month or this year, but 10 years down the road. I think that’s what has been done. We’ve tried to look at this from all angles.

From the expense side, we’ve cut some expenses without cutting services. Part of that has been made available because we’ve had some innovative thought processes with computer systems and electronic capabilities made available. With the communication between departments and entities, we’ve been able to eliminate duplications. From the revenue side, we’re looking at some new capabilities of doing some custom work, which we’re doing through cattle evaluation for other breeds. We’re also looking at different ways to advance selection tools with DNA technology. That’s an area that is expanding, and as we get into larger samplings we’re going to have other EPDs that we can affect and probably have some opportunities for some categorical traits that we’ve never had EPDs for.

That’s thinking out of the box — thinking toward what we can do next. Actions are being taken on the expense side and actions are being taken on the income side, but more than that, we’re considering where we’re going to be. And we’re doing that with as much diligence as possible. We’re focused on where we’re going to be, not this year, not next, but 10 years from now.

Q: Faced with a challenging economic year and high-priced inputs, what do breeders today have to do to maintain a successful businesses?

A: This business isn’t going to be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. We have to look at our own operations — no two are the same. We always have to look at what can we do to increase that difference between revenue and expense, of course, but, more than that, we’ll have to focus on services. With AI, embryo transfer, information exchange, etc., everyone has similar capabilities. The difference is going to be providing a different service or opportunity for service to our customers.

You can do that several different ways. You can do that by buying some of their calf crop back. You can do that by creating an opportunity for education about available options and marketing opportunities. This is all comes down to promoting the marketability of registered Angus cattle.

There are so many things that are marketable about Angus cattle, so many positives. We’ve been hung up on some of the negatives lately, but there are so many positives that are marketable. Once you start marketing the positives, of course it helps the breed, but every individual out there today is going to have to do that if he wants to stay in business.

Q: What’s your assessment of the short-term and long-term future for Angus?

A: The short-term outlook: Our Number 1 priority is getting on the same page and pulling in the same direction.

Should we do that, the long-term aspect is to increase the value of registered Angus cattle. There’s no limit to the long-term outlook. From a fairy tale perspective, we could be the beef industry. Sometimes that fairy tale aspect is not that far from reality.

Sometimes I think the long-term goals have to be almost unattainable, but you get there by achieving short-term goals. Everyone just has to pull the same direction. Everyone wants to, everyone needs to, and everyone can. If we can do that, the long-term goals are attainable.

Q: As President, is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: I sincerely appreciate the support that we have had personally. I said I’d do everything I could to live up to those expectations. In fact, for the people who know me real well, I’ll try to do more than they expect! (laughter)

I really appreciate that support. I really hope we can get behind this idea of the marketability of Angus and doing it together in the same direction. That all comes from open lines of communication and education. The tools are out there for us to communicate, we just need to use them. I’m talking about everyone in the breed. That capability is there. If we can go that direction and pull the same direction, there is no end to where we can go.

And I’m going to do everything I can to make myself as available as possible. The Association has done a good job of keeping open lines of communication regarding where we’re at and what we’re doing, and getting input. The first place to expand that information sharing is to start by leading by example, and I’m going to do that.