This past January, North Carolina beef producers welcomed the new sheriff to town. Milo Lewis was named the executive director of the North Carolina Cattlemen’s Association, replacing the retiring Brian Blinson. Lewis says beef cattle is in her blood.
“I grew up on a family farm in Farmville, which is on the edge of Pitt and Green Counties. My family had a diversified livestock and row crop operation, which included beef cattle. My brothers and I were pretty active in the 4H program, 4H youth livestock program, and the Junior Angus Association.”
An industry Milo says is diverse in the state.
“We have a lot of folks that raise cattle, that raise them all the way until they are harvested, and sell directly to consumers. We have a lot of producers. Majority of our producers, are raising cattle, and then they sell them when they are considered feeder calves. And then they leave our state and they go out to feed yards in the Midwest until they are meat harvest size, and they go into harvest and into the food chain.”
Cattle is a segment of agriculture which often flies under the radar in North Carolina.
“We had a group on a farm yesterday. These were folks that work with all different food suppliers, so folks from like the Outbacks, the Logans, the Ruth’s Chris, and we had them on a diversified livestock farm that had beef cattle and had a pork production system. And we had spent a lot of time on talking about how the nutrients from those swine operations, they were they were sprayed onto those fields and those pastures, the cattle grazed, those forages that grew because of the swine nutrients, and what that meant for the cattle industry, and how they are upcyclers, and we truly help make the sustainable model in the industry.”
Lewis says most cattle from North Carolina end up being processed out of state.
“But there has been a desire in the last few years to be able to process in the state, and it’s more for those folks that are wanting to go directly to the consumer. And so there’s been a lot of dollars spent. Covid was, of course, sort of the highlight of how to take federal dollars moving through the state system and then to put those into our food processing facilities to ensure to have the actual equipment, the plants, to meet the demand of producers wanting to process here in the state.
The current beef herd nationally is the smallest in more than 50 years, and input prices are still high.
Those are challenges, but right now, the producer in North Carolina is benefiting from that challenge of the small herd. They’re actually being able to leverage that system because of supply and demand. We also have one of the strongest demands in the country for beef.”