Part of the Aussie contingent at CattleCon 2025

Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association CEO Will Evans provides a first-hand update from the United States’ largest cattle industry event, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s annual CattleCon conference, currently underway with more than 8000 attendees in San Antonio, Texas.  

A Warm Welcome from Faraway Friends

Over the past four years the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association has been working to develop stronger ties with our counterparts in the United States.

Last year, most recent past President of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Todd Wilkinson came to Alice Springs, in response to our invitation to be a keynote speaker for the NTCA conference.

To our surprise, his message was somewhat emphatic and delivered just so. Now, there are few people anywhere able to speak to the core of who we are as well as some of the past Presidents of the NTCA. I have witnessed it, and I can say it is an undisputed truth and a source of great pride for our membership and our staff.

But I will begrudgingly admit, Todd came close. An American. Standing on a podium in the heart of Australia, in the middle of cattle country, in front of a room full of people who have spent their life raising cattle in some of the harshest most remote parts of our country, he stood comfortably among us and spoke with great power and great honestly. If you squinted hard enough and tuned your hearing very carefully, he could have been one of us.

He spoke about walking into meetings in Europe representing the NCBA and being the only person with a hat in the room. He spoke of too many voices speaking on behalf of cattlemen, rather than cattlemen speaking for themselves. He spoke of too many people willing to compromise on our behalf, when the fight is what we really wanted anyway. And he spoke of groups in Washington who were willing to “go along to get along” with Government policy making. And he proudly proclaimed, “NCBA doesn’t do that”.

One of his key messages specifically for us – was this. Australia needed to be more strongly represented internationally. Not by Government officials or politicians, but by industry.

And so, this week, the NTCA has sent some of its staff to attend the NCBA Conference in San Antonio Texas in an attempt to create closer organisational ties between us, with the view of building opportunity for our members to more closely collaborate and engage. A number of NTCA Executive members have also travelled off of their own back, to build relationships and look for opportunities to continue to grow this nascent bond.

Focusing primarily on learning about the policy issues facing their industry, we have been somewhat surprised to learn that many of their issues are in fact our issues too. And we agree strongly with each other that there are fights that need to be had and that by getting into them together we stand a better chance.

The forces that oppose the cattle industry, whether they be environmental activism, animal rights extremists, the EU, lab grown meat companies or international investment trends that increasingly threaten agricultural land with renewables or other green initiatives, are global and interlinked. And the message we keep hearing over here is – we need to be so too.

Standing in the lobby of an enormous conference centre in Texas, with 8000 attendees checking in at the arrivals hall, after flying for 30 hours to get here, I will admit to being somewhat overawed. I must have appeared so too, as a kind gentlemen approached me with a smile, holding out a little pin. They had an enormous map of US on the wall, with a comparatively tiny map of the world in the corner. He asked me to place the pin for where I had travelled from, and he watched as a I crouched down and carefully placed it at the very tip of Australia.

As I turned back, his mouth had sagged and he looked somewhat pensive. Then, as I am learning Texans often do, his massive smile came exploding back and his voiced boomed, “By golly we just have cattle everywhere don’t we – it’s great to have you guys here.”

We do have cattle everywhere. And if being here and talking and listening to these folks has confirmed one thing, it’s that we have friends and allies everywhere as well. And getting on a plane to come and talk and learn from each other is well worth it.

Where it all begins

Heavy metal CattleCon style

‘Now that’s a trade show’ – Everything a rancher could possible need under one roof the vast trade hall at Cattlecon 2025 in San Antonio.