David Pfrang and Jim Dobbins, who live in the rolling hills of northeastern Kansas, are “two farmers raising an few cattle and a lot of Cain,” says Harvest Public Media in a deep dive into the politics of the beef checkoff program. The program gets $1 each time a head of cattle is sold, amounting to $80 million a year, half of it kept for state-level research and promotional work, and half of it going to the national level. The checkoff’s work is familiar to millions of consumers. It was behind the “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” advertisements.
The cattle industry has many intramural divisions – producers vs packers, big ranchers vs small operators, cow-calf producers vs feeders, to name three. Pfrang and Dobbins are part of a group that says too much of the checkoff money goes to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and state-level allies. Over a quarter-century, NCBA received 98 percent of the national checkoff money, says Harvest Public Media. It quotes Colorado rancher Wil Bledsoe as saying, “I don’t want them using my money to fight my livelihood like they have been.”
NCBA says its use of checkoff funds is extensively audited and that it does not mix its agenda with checkoff projects.