In 1916, just 11 years after she married the future 32^nd U.S. President, Eleanor Roosevelt said the following: “Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, yet the youngest you’ll ever be again.”

She was right then and prescient enough that the sentiment is relevant today.

Before discussing the quote’s place in today's discourse, let me first go out on a slender, bendable — but, one hopes, not breakable — limb and forecast some of 2022’s more compelling issues for our country and our industry, and then assess the quote’s applicability for today and the future.

What will we have to contend with in 2022 and beyond in our country, and more specifically in our industry? Well, for starters, how about the following:

COVID and its variants with more to come;
Anti-mask mendacity and anti-vaccine vituperators;
Zealous January 6th “patriots” facing the bar of justice;
Continuing competition-stifling cattle-beef production conglomerations and consolidating chicken company’s growing industry control, both attracting USDA and DOJ examinations and threatened restraining actions;
USDA infusing tranches of money into beef production to enhance and expand small company capacity;
Foreign ownership of two of beef’s Big Four with their concomitant industry control;
Cattle ranchers unable to stay in business as the venerable “cowboy and trusty steed” images disappear into the future;
Aberrant weather with droughts, tornadic activity, biblical rains, record snowfalls, even desertification, often human-caused, that we cannot seem to control nor resolve;
Another election season with all its machinations from which we never seem to get a respite;
Threats to our democracy that are more real than I can remember studying or experiencing;
Climate change — need I say more?
And that’s just a few.

Second, what bright stars are in our future for 2022? Maybe some are the same as those issues above, but also:

Growing beef and chicken consumption.
Controlling COVID and its lesser virulent variants so we can get back to “normal.”
Consumer initially accepting and then partially rejecting plant-based faux “meat” alternatives, but — and this is a big butt — consumers have been attracted to the meat case by the alt-meats and in growing numbers can pick up the real stuff instead;
Meat and poultry plant worker wages, welfare and well-being becoming top of mind for industry executives; could it be because of union organizational fears?
We have an ever changing and growing industry. Are you leading or following?
And I’m sure you can think of more.

Finally, back to Eleanor and her quote. Old or young, life is too short not to be enthusiastically embraced. For me, I just don’t have the time left in my life to listen much less think about all the parochial problems each viewer offers up. For my government, my older self says, “Deliver the mail, defend the shores and stay the hell out of my business!” As for the rest of you, my younger self says, “Lead, follow or get out of the way!” I agree with Eleanor, so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

However, I am just tired, real tired of all the pundits and other “experts”, whether on CNN, MSNBC, FOX or Newsmax, opining on what needs to be done to “save” our country. And, for our industry, until you have walked a mile in the shoes of those on the front lines “facing the bears in the cages” (producers, shareholders, employees and customers), you just don’t know what is needed nor wanted.

Many of you have vicariously or actually walked that mile and can speak with authority on what needs to be done to address and solve the industry issues I list above. But your positive and reasonable voices seem to get drowned out by the objectors in our audience shouting above the maelstrom. All that shouting exacerbates the problem: too much shouting and too little listening or thinking, which results in too few workable solutions. To find such solutions, as a manager, I summarily dismissed those who told me what couldn’t be done and sought out those who convinced me what could be done. I knew they would get it done no matter what “it” was.

If by Eleanor’s definition you are old or young, what matters is what you get done whatever your “age.”

It’s 2022. Now what?

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