Coming from outside of agriculture offers Colorado rancher Cassidy Johnston a unique perspective of the beef industry and how ranchers can better interact with the general public to curb misinformation about raising cattle.
“I believe we can be a lot more impactful with how we communicate in agriculture,” she says.
As an outsider who has been fully immersed in the beef industry for the past 15 years, Johnston bridges the gap between the ranch and the table and encourages others to do the same.
“We often do not explain ourselves very well or at all,” she observes having been an outsider. “And a lot of the training or conversations about how we communicate, I don’t think is super effective.”
Johnston shares some tough love with the ranching community because she loves the industry and wants it to do better.
City Gone Country
Growing up in the suburbs of Denver, Johnston’s only ties to agriculture as a child were going to her godmother’s neighbor’s ranch in Aspen to ride horses. She was going to school in Boulder pursuing a degree in environmental studies when a business research development project led her to the National Western Stock Show and inspired her to think about ranching.
“We were doing an economic impact survey about the Stock Show on Denver and the surrounding area,” Johnston says. “While I was there, there were horses, and I wondered if there was an honor thesis topic that would allow me to be around horses. I decided on ranching.”
That led her to the Agricultural Research, Development and Education Center (ARDEC) at Colorado State University. She also spent a summer working as a ranch hand and beginning to experience firsthand what it was like to take care of cattle and land. She also met her husband, Bert. The couple has worked for both commercial and seedstock operations, including the Silver Spur and Sitz Angus.
Today, they continue ranching and raising three boys on Stirrup Ranch, a large cow-calf operation outside Canon City, where Bert is the manager. Johnston also spends her time advocating for the beef industry through speaking, consulting and social media engagement.
“I try to help people understand where their hands are most useful and where they can be the most helpful without having to do what everyone else is doing,” she says.
Johnston admits she notices problems, yet it’s more important to her to find solutions because “no one is coming to save us.”
“We really like to center ourselves in agriculture and make ourselves the heroes of our own story,” she says. “We are selling something, whether it’s actual food that we grow, or it’s our business. We want people to like us. We want people to trust us, and we don’t do that when all we do is talk about ourselves.”
Building Relationships
She encourages ranchers to consider the spheres of influence they already have.
“Who do you come into contact with? Where is your impact?” she asks. “For some people, they could be super involved in their local cattlemen group. If you’re involved, it’s your job to make sure to outreach and recruit younger members.”
While some may enjoy engaging with consumers online or giving tours, others would prefer to use their experience and capital to help younger families get started. There are a lot of different ways to impact the industry.
“I want ranchers to feel empowered to do what they do best,” she says. “People should ask themselves, ‘what are my gifts? where do my hands go and what is one way that I can help?’”
She points out not everyone is going to want interns on their ranch, but maybe they are going to be active on Capitol Hill. Some might hate public speaking, but enjoy organizing events, working in the background or fundraising. Others could be involved in local cattlemen’s groups and end up serving at the state level.
“Everybody’s different, but I think people assume that other people are going to step up,” she says. “No one else is coming to save us so we don’t have an option to not be involved somehow.”
Johnston’s passion for the industry fuels her choice to be involved.
“I get a lot of grief for being a first-generation producer,” Johnston says. “Even though I don’t own anything, I choose this. I don’t have to do this. I have no family operation. Neither does my husband. We choose it every day. We choose to live here and do what we do.”
Johnston also appeared on the Top Producer podcast to visit more about her beef industry experience, looking at the quality in the industry, trends she sees, and the challenges of working on a large cattle operation.
Your next read: New World Screwworm: The Billion Dollar Battle at the Southern Border
