426: The Cattle Industry Needs to Have Some Hard Conversations with Seth Pratt

Today, Seth Pratt joins Lauren on the Cattle USA Daily Podcast to talk about what it really takes to build a ranch that can survive for generations. From working off the ranch and understanding opportunity cost to creating more stable revenue, using genomic and carcass data, and thinking differently about how we measure cattle, Seth challenges some of the traditional ways of doing business in agriculture. The conversation also gets into some of the harder questions facing the next generation, including access to capital, succession planning, profitability and what it actually takes to build a sustainable ranching business.

Links:

Connect with Seth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-pratt-84403440/

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Key Takeaways:

• Stable revenue can matter more than chasing the highs of the cattle market
• Opportunity cost should be part of every decision about time and labor
• Country Natural Beef offers a way to reduce some market timing risk
• Red meat per acre can change how producers think about cattle performance
• Genomic and carcass data can help make better herd decisions
• Cattle need to fit the environment and resources of the ranch
• The path into agriculture is not always as accessible as the industry makes it seem
• Succession and long-term planning require conversations before there is a crisis
• Producers need to question practices simply being done because they have always been done
• Agriculture needs honest conversations about what the next 100 years should look like

Chapters:

03:24 – What Working Off the Ranch Taught Him08:22 – Building a Multigenerational Ranch10:30 – Making Revenue More Stable13:00 – The Opportunity Cost of Your Time15:30 – How Country Natural Beef Works19:15 – Managing Market Volatility23:30 – Using Data to Make Better Cow Herd Decisions26:00 – Red Meat Per Acre27:40 – Building a Cow Herd You Want to Work Around28:32 – The Hard Conversations Agriculture Needs32:00 – Is Ranching Accessible to the Next Generation?34:35 – Who Does Agriculture Need to Welcome?37:27 – Challenging the Status Quo

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