Meeting season is in full swing, with farmers and ranchers conferring across the region and the nation in preparation for the 2025 planting season. Ashley Herring is Director of Consumer Information with the North Carolina Cattlemen’s Beef Council, and spent much of last week at the Southern Farm Show in Raleigh. She said it’s important for the group to be represented in places like that.

“First and foremost, we want to visit with our membership, visit with our producers, and, you know, hear what’s on their mind, hear what’s relevant for them and what kind of topics and things that they’re having conversations about. We want to help them renew their membership if they haven’t done that online, and then we also want to share with them about our North Carolina cattle conference coming up February, 21 and 22nd in Hickory.”

Ashley says being where farmers and ranchers are also gives her the opportunity to get the scuttlebutt on what’s happening in farm country.

“Profitability and sustainability is always top of mind for our farmers. I think that everyone is ideally at the beginning of the year, you’re looking to the future. You want to have some plans. We want to pass these farms down to the next generation, if possible. And that’s really important.”

And speaking of the future, she’s enthusiastic about what 2025 is going to hold for ag.

“I think we have a lot to look forward to. I think there’s a lot of opportunities out there, and especially for cattle farmers. You know, we’re independent folks, and we, you know, a lot of times our cattle farmers have more than one livestock protein row crops produce. And so it’s always good to have a variety of things going on on the farm, and some of our farmers are also directly selling their meat or venturing into retail. And so there’s a lot of neat things happening and changing.”

And as she mentioned, the annual conference is coming up February 21 and 22nd in Hickory.

“The NC Cattle Conference takes place at the Hickory Metro Center in Hickory. Friday, the cattle conference kicks off. We have a wonderful trade show. We have some really good speakers. We have Michael Murphy, who is our keynote. He’s with CattleFax, so he’ll be presenting at lunch Friday, and then Saturday morning we have our youth recognition breakfast. It’s always a really good time to see the future of ag, they’re the youth that are interested in cattle production, and are very engaged and moving forward and shaping our industry.”

More info at NCcattle.com.