 Sustainability means renewing the resources that we have and preserving the land for the next generation to come. Our beef producers do a good job of promoting sustainability by taking care of the land and taking care of the cattle so that we can have a healthy product for consumers. Beef cattle play an important role in the carbon cycle. They're the ultimate up-cyclers so they can take graze pasture and convert that into high-quality protein for consumers like you and me and then they also return those nutrients back to the pasture system which improves soil health. At the end of the day cattle are not adding new carbon to the atmosphere but actually they're just using what's there and repurposing it for their own growth and benefit to consumers. Cattle consume many byproducts of other industries. Without beef cattle many of our feed byproducts would have no value and we would have to land apply those through composting which could create another source of greenhouse gas emissions. I chose animal sciences because I grew up on a beef cow-calf operation in Georgia and I always loved agriculture and I knew I wanted to give back. Agriculture is the basis for our food production in the U.S. and so it touches everybody's lives on a daily basis.