I was honoured to be invited to take up the role of president of ARCBA last August.
My first observation was it has become somewhat of an “old men’s club” and this flows through to the ARCBA executive selected from the member breeds.
The registered cattle breed board needs a mix of middle-aged board members who offer experience and young members for new ideas. Breed boards should also offer greater gender equality in representation.
I was delighted when the ARCBA executive backed a plan to run a Young Breed Leaders workshop. A total of 43 young breed leaders attended from across many breeds. There was a 50:50 split in gender representation. A good start!
For each of four important topics the workshop was divided into five groups of nine. Each group selected a chairman (equivalent to a breed president) and secretary (equivalent to breed executive officer) for each session. Membership of groups were different for each question to ensure most participants had an executive position by the end of the workshop.
Many participants later said they felt capable of filling a breed board position given more experience. One participant was selected as a member of the ARCBA executive. So the exercise of repopulating boards with younger members including more females has begun.
I thank Don Nicol, Alex McDonald, Colin Rex, Ben Noller and Steve Skinner.
