At a recent industry event, I was able to sit in on one of those panel discussions. You know the kind: three or four so-called experts sitting at a table, each one taking a few minutes to give their spiel, a few perfunctory questions from the audience, a moderator with a plastered-on smile trying desperately to make sure the segment at least approaches the neighbourhood of its allotted time limit. Not to belittle every one of these things – I actually see a lot of merits to the format – but most of these “discussions” are little better than infomercials and contain precious little, well, discussion. Despite their potential, a lot of these turn into long dronings-on with no interaction or indication that the audience is getting anything of value from the whole ordeal.
But this one was different. The general gist: three cow-calf producers talking about how they juggle terminal and maternal genetic traits as they make breeding decisions for their herds. It’s pretty much accepted in the industry that selecting for terminal traits (Growth, Marbling, Ribeye Area, etc.) is antagonistic to the development of maternal traits (Stayability, Pregnancy Rate, Calving Ease and the like). So our diverse(ish) panel dutifully took their turns describing their operations, each of which sounded rather progressive and successful.
The moderator thanked the producers and opened it up for questions. And that’s when something fantastic happened. Someone stood up, accepted the proffered microphone, and spent a minute and a half articulating a question you could tell he had been thinking hard about for most of the presentation up to that point. I’m paraphrasing here and losing a lot of the nuance, but his question boiled down to, “Why don’t we just develop breeding programs that utilize heterosis to the point where we have strong genetics for both maternal and terminal traits?”
Of course, it wasn’t the first time that question had been asked, and it certainly won’t be the last. But the tone and thoughtfulness turned that Q&A session into a legitimate discussion, with others in the crowd soon joining in and having almost as much to say as the ostensible presenters. And it wasn’t that someone butted in where they didn’t belong, hijacked the conversation and played devil’s advocate just to prove how smart they were. I’m not saying any major breakthroughs happened, but this was a real, honest-to-goodness sharing of ideas, massaging questions to find collaborative answers.
I tell you, folks, it was as refreshing as a midsummer downpour on the thirsty prairie. And the thought came to me: Man, wouldn’t it be awesome if this were how everyone approached every conversation?
The more I thought about it, though, I came to realize something: Despite what our TV screens and social media feeds inundate us with most days, there’s a whole lot more civility and kindness and gracious collaboration out there in the world than I typically acknowledge. It’s no secret that we live in a time of turmoil, at least according to our inexhaustible supply of loudmouthed politicians, fearmongering talking heads and in-your-face social media influencers. But we’re under no obligation to give the attention hogs the eyeballs or brain cells or time they demand. There’s a lot more good than bad to be found in the world, especially for those of us blessed to call the cattle world home.
