Scenes from OCA’s Spring Quarterly

Before Oregon’s stay at home orders began to emerge, OCA held the Spring Quarterly meeting in Salem, March 2-3. While the plans changed rapidly after the republican walk-out, the meeting was successful. On March 2, leadership heard research from OSU and learned about Oregon’s ghost towns from the Oregon Archive. Oregon State’s Steer-A-Year club joined OCA for dinner at Bentley’s in downtown Salem. OCA had a successful business meeting handling old and new business. from committees and the executive board.

Dr. Carlos Ochoa and his colleagues from Oregon State University presented on research being conducted in three different projects on water-riparian systems monitoring and water quality. Locations of the projects are Wilks Ranch in Eastern Oregon, Camp Creek in Central Oregon and Oak Creek in Western Oregon. Dr. Ochoa presented an update on findings in Eastern Oregon surrounding the removal of juniper trees and the impacts of juniper tree ecosystems in each region of Oregon. This research has been funded by the Oregon Beef Council. You can learn more about Dr. Ochoa’s work surrounding ecohydrology at: https://ecohydrology.oregonstate.edu/.

This meeting is traditionally an opportunity for cattle industry leadership to congregate in the Capitol building during legislative session for public hearings and to communicate concerns to legislatures. These plans were changed due to the walk-out of republicans over contentious bills such as cap and trade. Instead OCA’s Political Advocate Rocky Dallum was able to provide a brief recap on March 2, during dinner. At the time, no one knew Governor Brown would sign an executive order directing state agencies to make sweeping policy changes regarding cap and trade and before Oregonian’s could process such an overstep, stay at home orders and a pandemic crisis would blanket the nation.

During the business meeting, leadership reviewed national policies which originated from Oregon, discussed strategic planning efforts to increase OCA’s work, and heard from the brand department about increased wages for brand inspectors, to name a few agenda items. The leadership also decided to officially endorse Cliff Bentz in his run for Congressman for Oregon’s second congressional district. OCA believes his representation is an extraordinary opportunity for Oregon’s cattle industry. Pictured is Cliff Bentz speaking to attendees during dinner about his campaign platform.