Anna Kobza, Ph.D.

There’s almost 60 years between these two photos.

This is my grandpa, Robert Gillespie. “Big Bob”.
He got into the cattle feeding business in the early 1960s. In the 1960s, large commercial feedlots were emerging across the plains, and Nebraska was becoming a premier feeding state. He and his partners, the Augustin brothers were one of the early adopters of large scale cattle feeding near Shelby, Nebraska.
1967 is when I believe this photo was taken. And a lot has changed since then.
In my bookcase sit a short book he wrote detailing him and my grandmother’s lives. Of course he tells stories of the feedlot which are my particular favorite. Like when an Alabama salesman came to the yard selling oyster shell flake as a roughage source, and how they ended up feeding it.

He wrote about the end too. The hardships of the 1980’s farm crisis, when 24% interest rates made it impossible to keep going. “…there was no way we could make the payments. It would eat us up.”

In 1967, the Omaha Stockyards were already seeing a decline in livestock receipts as the industry began shifting toward direct buying by packing plants and away from the traditional central market system.

In 1967, Nebraska finished about 3.1 million head of cattle.
Today we lead the nation finishing over 5 million head every year.

Beef was king of the meat trade then, and today’s it’s still king among consumers.

A lot has changed.
We feed cattle longer.
We feed them heavier.
We produce higher quality carcasses.
We read bunks with a laptop at our side instead of just a pen and paper.
We use micro machines and technology that would have been unimaginable sixty years ago.

Our tools are different, our cattle are different, and our industry as a whole is different. But despite being separated by nearly sixty years, here we are, standing in the same place.

April recap before May runs away on me!

From Feedlots To TikTok, Young Ag Influencer Tries To Bridge Beef Divide A young ag influencer who didn’t grow up on a ranch is becoming one of the beef industry’s most recognizable faces. She says she’s trying to narrow the…

attempting a profile pic update… thoughts? 1 or 2? 3 or 4? 5?? help.

Shipping calves and making home reno progress this weekend.

When the board dipped last week, it caught the beef industry’s attention in a way that felt overdue. Many came online expressing shock, frustration, anger, dissapointment. Completely valid feedlings. He stood on Air Force One, said he planned to import more Argentinian beef and the next day told us he “loves” us, but we’re incapable of understanding our own business. So as I’ve watched the reactions this last week, I have felt the same dissapointment and anger, but I certainly wasn’t shell shocked. This didn’t feel sudden. It felt like the predictable result of patterns that have been there for a while.

I say this plainly, not critically: this isn’t the first red flag.

In truth, I think the price of beef for what it takes to produce it is fair. And importing more beef from Argentina is unlikely to meaningfully lower prices. And now, very quickly, we’ve been handed a “comprehensive plan” to solve everything. A 13 page document that looks like I could have whipped it up in canva. I know some people feel hopeful about it. If it gives you hope, I won’t take that from you. But you’re more optimistic than I am. To me, this reads more like a temporary way to quiet the noise than a long-term strategy. I would be genuinely glad to be proven wrong.
The people I know in the beef industry are proud of what they do, myself included. Feeding people matters. That pride in producing food for our country is sincere.

But I think we need to talk honestly about something harder.
If we are proud to feed the nation, then we should care deeply that millions of Americans are struggling to eat.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut $1 Billion dollars in federal funding for schools and foodbanks to buy fresh food from local farms. This affected children, families, and small producers. It didn’t draw the same outrage, but it should have.

Right now, 47 million adults and children experience food insecurity. Nearly 42 million rely on the SNAP benefits expiring tomorrow. And instead of creating policy that focuses on reducing hunger, the proposal on the table is to place tighter restrictions on what people using SNAP are allowed to buy. Conditional access to food isn’t policy. It’s control.

From what I understand, the USDA currently has $5 billion in reserve funds that could be used to extend food assistance during the shutdown. But this administration is refusing to release it.

Meanwhile, we have $40 billion to bail out Argentina and more to tear down the people’s house to construct a ballroom.

In a healthy governemnt a shutdown ends quickly. Because leaders on both sides prioritize the well being of the people they represent.

Most of us in agriculture are far closer to needing food assistance someday than we are to being billionaires. I think it’s important that we remember that.

We don’t owe politicians loyalty. They owe us representation. And accountability when they withhold it.

Also, we still haven’t seen the Epstein files.