As a teenager, my best friend would often take me to his grandmother’s home. She was born in New York, the daughter of Russian immigrants, and made strudel and soup that could shame Julia Childs. One summer day, we dropped by her house before doing some back-to-school shopping. She lectured us not to blow through our summer savings on expensive duds. But there was one purchase where we should always shell out some extra bucks. “Only a fool buys cheap shoes,” she warned. “Quality shoes and a nice haircut – that’s what makes the man.”

Spend a few days in the blistering Texas sun during the state’s worst drought in generations, and you learn something vital about the beef industry. The summer of 2011 may be winding down, but for many producers in the Southwest, this has been a scorcher that’s stuck around too long. The heart of Texas typically gets around 36 to 37 inches of rain a year – this year it’s received less than 8. The state saw the hottest month of June on record and the driest 12-month stretch through July.

As much as I can guarantee that we Americans love our hamburgers, I can say with equal certainty that Germans relish their cucumbers. So it was with some fascination I watched that country – one at the forefront of the organic food revolution – abandon one of its culinary staples during this spring’s deadly outbreak of E. coli.

A few years ago, my wife and I traveled overseas. While visiting friends in their home, the conversation turned to our kids. This friend said her son enjoyed studying music, and I said my son had an interest in U.S. history. “American history,” she snuffed. “You Americans have no history.”

Each day on the way to work, I drive across a bridge. It’s an impressive structure standing 486 feet high above a scenic canyon gorge with a winding green river. But what’s most peculiar about this bridge is how, when the season’s right, you’re bound to see people hurl themselves over it.

If you’ve spent any time engaging in a discussion that promotes your beef product, you’ll eventually come to talking about what your cattle eat. And today, that probably makes you well versed in the debate over grain-fed vs. grass-fed beef.

Whether or not you’ve been hooked to the TV or Internet watching world events the past few months, it’s obvious that an awakening has jolted certain corners of the globe.

Say what you want about the federal government being too big, too greedy and too cumbersome to effectively regulate free enterprise. But sometimes even an 800-pound gorilla has to listen and change. That’s what unfolded when thousands of livestock producers and cattlemen provided feedback on the National Animal Identification System two years ago.

Call it a reboot for the government’s biggest animal ID undertaking ever. The U.S Department of Agriculture is preparing to take another shot at an animal disease traceability program this spring, while pinning its hopes that beef producers are more agreeable the second time around.

As if raising cattle in harsh conditions wasn’t hard enough, today’s beef producer faces an enormous uphill battle on the landscape of public relations. Eating beef remains popular, healthy and affordable in today’s market. And yet the growing percentage of the population with no direct ties to agriculture creates a complex obstacle for the beef industry.