Bison Month Part 2

Bison Month Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The bison industry has been growing steadily over the past several years which is interesting since at one time these magnificent animals literally covered the plains and when they moved it sounded like thunder. Dave Carter is the executive director of the National Bison Association who just had their annual conference.

CARTER: Well we just finished up our annual summer conference for the Bison Association and this year it was up in Big Sky, Montana and we had an incredibly large turnout, about 300 folks showed up. Along with some of the folks that of course have ben around he business for years we had a lot of folks that are either newcomers or taking a look at getting into the bison business.

Carter says there was a lot of excitement at this years conference.

CARTER: People feel very good about where our business is at. Not only are the producers out there, the ranchers receiving record prices for their animals but we’re continuing to see the consumer demand grow. As more people pick up on the great taste of bison along with the nutritional benefits and the fact that it’s a good sustainable meat we’re just seeing more and more people come to the counter looking for our products and we’re scrambling right now to meet the demand.

He says there was a lot of talk at the conference about the interaction of private ranchers, the public herds and the conservation community. In addition there was some discussion on the upcoming farm bill.

CARTER: Right now as we continue to grow there’s going to be more issues as we come up from under the radar screen in terms of some of the regulations that govern bison around the country. There’s state laws that are being looked at being passed or federal regulations. I think we want to be a part of the farm bill discussion coming up because we think bison can be a great alternative agricultural enterprise for a lot of folks so there was some discussion on that.

And with this being National Bison Month, Carter talks about how they utilize it to get their message across.

CARTER: We do a lot of things to help our individual marketers promote the product and we have a special food publication that just came out that a lot of our folks are picking up right now to get to their customers and it has some articles by chefs and a lot of recipes on how to prepare bison. For our farmers’ marketers we call them a deck of cards - but it’s individual cards that have recipes for individual cuts of bison because even though supplies are tight we certainly want to encourage people when it come time to do one of those summer cookouts, there’s nothing better on the grill than a good bison steak or some good bison burgers.

For more information on bison and the bison industry visit bisoncentral.com.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.