Chuck Jolley   |   Updated: May 20, 2011

If you graduated from Kansas State and you’re fanatic about it, people say you bleed purple.  I went to Michigan State and I bleed green during basketball season. Let’s not talk about their football team.  Daren Williams has a PhD. from Cattle College and he bleeds beef.

Williams travels all over God’s country – that would be anyplace that’s not New York or Los Angeles – preaching the gospel according to Angus and Hereford and Braunvieh and Charolais and all the other beef breeds.  He’s at home in cattle country, talking up the nutritional value of beef.  Scratch that – he talks taste first, then nutrition.  He eats beef, sleeps beef and breathes beef. 

Yeah, he’s the Ambassador of Beef and he’s very good at his profession.  The only problem is he lives on trains and planes and automobiles and sleeps in enough hotel rooms that he should get a stack of free room passes at Holiday Inn Express in Topeka. Getting him to hold still for an interview is a problem.  When I tried to contact him Thursday afternoon, I got an emailed reply. ”I’m driving across Nebraska.”

Well, as soon as he got to the other side of the Cornhusker state and found a spot with decent coverage, we got it all done.  Here’s what Williams had to say for himself.

Q. Let's start by talking about what you do for a living.  When you're not on a plane and actually have a few minutes to sit face-to-face with people, what do you want to accomplish?

A. My profession is communication. My passion is agriculture. I am fortunate to have been able to connect the two throughout my career, especially in my position as executive director of communications at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. I do spend a lot of time on airplanes and hotel rooms in places like Hays, Kansas (my home state), Sidney, Montana (when Great Lakes decides to fly) and Kearney, Nebraska (where I am today).

I travel to these final frontiers of common sense in America to meet face-to-face with farmers and ranchers to discuss the questions and concerns on the minds of urban consumers and how we can help answer them. I learned early in my career setting up phone banks in New Hampshire on Bob Dole’s 1988 presidential campaign that one person can only do so much, but if you empower and equip a grassroots network of thousands, you can make a difference. That is what I want to accomplish…building a grassroots network of farmers and ranchers who will make a difference for beef.

Q. I can find you on Facebook, you Tweet and you blog, which makes you kind of a big deal in the social networking world.  The thousand or so birthday wishes you received from family and friends on Facebook last week point that out.  Why do you spend so much time eNetworking?

A. With the invention of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg did more to change modern communication than anyone since Alexander Graham Bell. On his Facebook page Zuckerberg says, “I am trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share.”

Facebook and Twitter and blogs make it possible for farmers and ranchers in rural America to connect with consumers from New York City to LA and share stories and pictures of daily life raising animals and crops to feed the world. These connections and stories and images are powerful.

Personally, my family and friends enrich my life. My Facebook friends include aunts, uncles and cousins, past and present neighbors, childhood friends, high school and college classmates, colleagues from throughout my career, and the farmers and ranchers I meet as I travel across the country. Staying connected to all of these people adds meaning to my life.

Q. About something a few of us consider just a bit strange - your passion for running, biking and swimming. Why do you do it?

A. I love to eat. When I was a teenager I could eat anything and never gain weight. Then I hit my 20s, got married, stopped moving, and gained weight…a lot of weight. I went from 175 to 275 in 10 years. At age 30 I was clinically obese. If I had continued on that path you might be watching me on Biggest Loser rather than asking me these questions!

I have two daughters who were one and four at the time and I decided I wanted to be around to see
them grow into the wonderful young women they are today. Dieting was not an option. I had to start moving. I began by riding my bike 10, 20, 50 and even 100 miles at a time and eventually got talked into signing up for a triathlon. I had grown up on a lake in Topeka, ran track in high school and was now a cyclist so figured why not. I nearly drowned in my first triathlon but muddled through and have now completed 13 tris, including two Ironman 70.3 distance events.

Next month, on June 11, I will compete in the Boise Ironman 70.3 as a member of Team BEEF. Why? As extreme runner and Team BEEF member Dane Rauschenberg says, “You can’t cross the finish line if you don’t show up at the starting line.” I do it for the feeling I get when I cross the finish line. It is the feeling of setting a goal, working hard to achieve the goal, then crossing the finish line and saying, “I did it."

Q. Team BEEF is something you've mentioned a few times when you write about your exercise routine. What is it?

A. We started Team BEEF four years ago as a tangible way to demonstrate that beef is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Beef has gotten a bad rap for too many years. Beef is a good or excellent source of 10 essential nutrients and vitamins like zinc, iron, protein and B vitamins that provide fuel for physical activity. These nutrients help build muscle, repair wounds and provide energy.

As our Team BEEF running, cycling and triathlon jerseys say, beef provides “fuel for the finish.” Team BEEF has grown to more than a thousand athletes across the country running in 5Ks, half marathons, marathons (including Boston) and triathlons. The message is simple: healthy people eat beef.

Q. You spend a lot of time 'advocating' for beef and trying to bust some of the more common myths about a good steak.  There are a few that sit my teeth on edge when I hear them.  How about listing a few that drive you to distraction?

A. How much time do we have? Five minutes? There are so many myths about beef it’s hard to know where to begin, but the Meatless Monday mantra that we should eat less meat in order to improve our health and the health of the planet sums up the two misconceptions I am most concerned about.

I believe most consumers reject PETA’s salacious antics and message that it is wrong to raise animals to produce food as too extreme. You won’t find anything on Meatless Monday’s website about it being “wrong” to eat meat, but their end goal is the same, and consumers seem to be buying into the idea that they should limit their meat consumption.

Cutting out meat one day a week seems doable but the message is still that meat is bad. The truth is, beef provides 10 essential nutrients our bodies need and there are many environmental benefits to raising and grazing cattle. A Minnesota cattlemen summed it up in a recent conversation when he said, “Beef is as good for the planet as it is for your health!

Q. Let's assume I'm going to drop by for dinner tonight and bring a few dozen friends.  What's on the grill? 

A. This is a tough call. After all, you can’t go wrong with beef, right? If I have the time and inclination, I would fire up the smoker and throw on a brisket, marinated for 12 hours and slow-smoked for another 12. But if you and your friends dropped by unannounced, I’d run down to my local grocery store and pick up a couple of Flat Iron steaks, marinate them in Dale’s Steak Seasoning for about 20 minutes while the charcoal is heating up. When the coals are ready, I’ll sear the steak on either side for 3-5 minutes over direct heat to seal in the juices and then move it off to the side, close the lid and let the Weber kettle work its magic for about another 25 minutes.

The final, and most important, step is to let the steak rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing it into one-quarter inch strips (be sure to cut across the grain). This allows the juices to absorb into the meat, ensuring a tender, juicy mouthful of deliciousness with every bite. Flat Iron steak is perfect for company. One steak will feed four people for under $10 and you can cook each steak to suit a variety of doneness preferences (make mine medium rare).

Q. Thousands of people read Cattlenetwork. What would you like to say to them?

A. Within our lifetimes we will face a tremendous challenge to feed a growing world population. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, our population will double in the next 40 years. As the human population grows, the land available to grow food will shrink. My challenge to all of your readers is to set aside the petty contentiousness currently dominating the debate over modern food production – both within agriculture and between farmers and ranchers and consumers – and have a reasonable conversation about how we will meet the growing global demand for food, fiber and fuel.

Cattlemen can set the example by calling a cease fire on attacking each other with unfounded claims about the benefits of one production method over another. Let’s celebrate the diversity of business models that provide consumers with a wide variety of choices to meet their personal preferences and pocketbooks. All beef, no matter how it is produced, has to meet the same safety standards and provides the same 10 nutrients and vitamins essential to good health. Beef. It’s all good. And it’s what’s for dinner.

Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Vance Publishing.

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