Networking for the Summit in Amarillo

by Faye Smith, AJSA Public Relations Officer

After a long, exciting summer, the American Junior Shorthorn Association Board of Directors, as well as other Shorthorn juniors, traveled to Amarillo, Texas for the Summit Leadership Conference. They were joined by members from the American Gelbvieh Junior Association and the American Junior Simmental Association for a four-day long excursion to learn more about being leaders in our respective organizations and educate ourselves on the beef industry.

Our first day started off with arrivals, as well as many icebreakers to give us ample time to meet each other, and go past the awkward stages that come with leadership conferences. Luckily for us, the Shorthorn Board made the most of the Icebreakers, and lead right into our evening with Dr. J.D. Ragland a speaker from Randall County Extension that gave us great advice on how to be better leaders and communicators. We ended our night with pizza and several very competitive card & board games.

Tuesday, we lead off with starting our morning bus ride with Megan Mangold, the intern and speaker for Cultivate Agency that runs the social media campaign #cattletales. She was able to capture our whole event through that social media and had many of us participants tell our agricultural story. This led us to Canyon, Texas where we spent our morning at the West Texas A&M University Ranch. Here, we were able to see their research on cloning a Prime Yield Grade One carcass, as well as tour their student-ran feedlot.

We spent the rest of our day touring the new agricultural facilities at West Texas A&M, as well as their student meat packing facility, and listening to several professors speak on subjects that ranged from beef quality and palatability, beef harvest and fabrication to riskmanagement within the beef industry and agricultural leadership.

For our last day, we spent the morning touring Wrangler Feedyard, ran by Cactus Feeders, learning about how commercial feedlots like Wrangler finish their cattle to the meat packer. They educated us on the care, feeding, and processing of cattle when they get into the feedyard. The attendees enjoyed seeing the large scale feedyard and learning how they operate.

Our afternoon was spent with the Cactus Cares group, a philanthropy team

created by Cactus Feeders. As a group we learned how Cactus Cares teams up with local organizations such as Snack Pak 4 Kids, a food distribution network for lowincome students in the Amarillo area. We were able to visit SP4K, and hear from Dyron Howell the owner and operator, who was a past Texas Junior Shorthorn Association member and president. As a group we learned from the organization and packed more than 2,000 snack bags for their summer weekend program.

This week was such an amazing opportunity for juniors to connect with other breed organization members, and learn the importance of the beef packing and processing journey. Although I will be too old to attend the next Summit Conference in 2023, I truly advise all of our juniors to think about the importance of attending one of these events. I not only met new friends, but I became much closer with my team of junior board members and Shelby. Being able to jump out of your comfort zones to attend one of these events is one of the best things you can do in your youth. =

AJSA Board with Dyron Howell Dr. J.D. Ragland PrimeOne Clones