From the Editor

Good ideas don’t always take root the first time around. Nowhere is this truer than with the returning debate over traceability and animal ID in the beef industry.

“Get Your Kicks on Route 66” was a popular song composed in 1946, and the boots at NCBA’s 2018 convention kicked the heck out of that theme in Phoenix, Arizona.

It was a scene straight out of a 1950s western. Tall saguaro cacti stood guarding the vast desert just outside of the booming metropolitan area of Phoenix. Sprinkled few and far between were what I believed to be olive and mesquite trees, and sand, lots and lots of sand.

As the piston moves on its first downward stroke, the intake valve opens to allow a mixture of fuel and air to fill the combustion chamber. Once the valve closes and the piston moves upward, the fuel-air mixture is compressed, causing it to combust.

Who wouldn’t want to spend a few days in Phoenix in the middle of winter – especially with a bunch of like-minded cowboys, crackers, buckaroos and punchers from Winnemucca to Ridge Spring?

It seems that no matter where I go, or whomever I talk to, everyone thinks that his particular corner of the world has the worst or most unique weather in the world. People in my home country of southern Idaho are fond of whining about the wind, especially in the springtime.