Sustainability has been a large buzz word over the last 2 decades, and beef sustainability has gotten a lot of attention based on the amount of enteric methane produced from rumen fermentation of feeds. In more recent years, grazing management and soil carbon has received a lot of attention in the beef industry focusing on the potential of grazing methods to increase carbon sequestration in the soil.
Producers get some information from different media outlets, but most likely focus on information coming from industry sources tied to research on beef production and sustainability. Consumers get information on beef sustainability from a wide range of media outlets and do not have a consistent ‘industry’ source. Additionally, the lack of direct ties to beef production by consumers may allow misinformation to influence their understanding of beef production.
Recent surveys have investigated the ideas and perceptions of producers and consumers about beef sustainability. Producers generally associate sustainable beef production with conserving land and water resources (47%) and economic viability of the ranch (43%) more than animal welfare (18%) and greenhouse gas emissions (2%). However, consumers generally associate sustainable beef production with animal welfare (55%) most and think about conserving land and water resources (32%), economic viability of the ranch (25%) and greenhouse gas emissions (24%) less.
Overall, there appears to be a large disconnect between the importance of animal welfare to sustainability between consumers and producers, which may be due to the lack of direct knowledge of beef production practices by consumers. Consumers also rank no antibiotics and hormones very high on the list of important attributes of sustainably raised beef (57% of consumers). A much smaller percentage of producers (18%) that associated beef sustainability with animal welfare mentioned raising cattle with hormones and antibiotics.
Additionally, there is a large disconnect between producers and consumers on the importance of greenhouse gas emission in sustainable beef production. Only 2% of producers mentioned climate, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon emissions, etc. when asked about components of sustainable beef production. However, 24% of consumers indicated greenhouse gas emissions were important. Although, greenhouse gas emissions seem to be the least important factor for most consumers. In a recent willingness to pay study at Kansas State University, consumers indicated that they were willing to pay $0.81 more per pound of ‘low carbon’ beef, whereas they were willing to pay $5.04 more per pound of ‘antibiotic free’ beef.
There is a disconnect between producers and consumers around perceptions of the components of sustainable beef production. Consumer education could be a means to reducing the disconnect between producers and consumers, but also producers need to understand that consumers generally think differently about sustainable beef production, which may help to ultimately producer beef in higher demand by consumers.
