Educators/livestock marketers named North Dakota Stockmen’s Association honorary members

Posted 09/27/2025

For immediate release:

Sept. 26, 2025

For more information, contact:

Randy Schmitt, NDSA president: (701) 537-3440 • [email protected]

Julie Schaff Ellingson, NDSA executive vice president: (701) 223-2522 • [email protected]

Educators/livestock marketers named

North Dakota Stockmen's Association honorary members

The North Dakota Stockmen's Association (NDSA) bestowed its Honorary Membership Award on two longtime industry leaders who have been influential both as educators and livestock marketers during its annual awards ceremony during the organization's 96^th Annual Convention & Trade Show in Minot, N.D., tonight. Ray Erbele of Streeter, N.D., and Tim Petry of Fargo, N.D., joined the honorary roster and were recognized for a lifetime of contributions to the organization and industry.

"While Ray and Tim have worked in different capacities over their careers, both have made a remarkable difference in the classroom and to the economic viability of farm and ranch families across the state with their data, their wisdom and their humble encouragement," said NDSA President Randy Schmitt, a Rugby, N.D., cow-calf producer.

Ray Erbele

Erbele learned the value of hard work, an appreciation for God's creations, the beauty and diversity of the four seasons and a passion for agriculture growing up on a Logan County farm and ranch. It was the foundation for his own diverse agricultural career that not only sustained his livelihood, but impacted hundreds of students and fellow cattle producers.

Erbele earned a vocational agriculture degree from North Dakota State University (NDSU) and taught high school ag at Ashley and Gackle High Schools, teaching for a decade as he grew his commercial cow-calf operation at the same time.

Joel Zenker, an NDSA member from Gackle, N.D., was one of Erbele's students and characterized him as someone who has had one of the biggest influences on his life. "He is an unbelievable person - someone who has always treated me like a son and who I could always count on no matter what the ask." Zenker remembers he and his fellow Gackle FFA officers meeting "Mr. Erbele" as their new ag teacher when he was a junior in high school. Perhaps it was his characteristic deep voice or the serious way he laid out the rules that night, but Zenker said, "We thought, holy smokes, he's going to be a tough one, but it didn't take long for us to realize how kind he was and how much he cared about us."

As his operation and family grew, Erbele decided to leave the classroom and focus his attention on his farming and ranching business, which had evolved into an Angus-Salers cowherd, a breed mix he selected and appreciated for its calf vigor and carcass quality.

Later, convinced by family friend and fellow North Dakotan Harry Anderson, who was a feedlot consultant in Kansas in the 1980s, about the need for strong backgrounding programs to help newly weaned calves acclimate before heading off to southern feedlots, Erbele implemented a custom backgrounding enterprise into the operation. He saw it as a way to curb the high morbidity and mortality rate of North Dakota calves and set them on a path to good health and efficient rates of gain. "Harry wanted someone to straighten out the bawling calves before they came south and convinced us to set up a custom backgrounding business," he recalled, calling it a win-win for North Dakota cow-calf producers and those further down the production chain. Erbele and his family went on to develop a state-permitted feedlot and have backgrounded as many as 2,000 head per year for producers from all major cattle-producing regions.

Erbele's backgrounding enterprise went hand in hand with him becoming a cattle buyer. "I was sitting at a sales barn just about every day of the week during certain times of the year looking for calves to put in our backgrounding lot," he recalled, so he formalized that work and became a licensed buyer. Later, in 1995, he took it a step further by joining George, Jim and Paul Bitz in the ownership of Napoleon Livestock Auction, the next natural progression in his diversified livestock career. Erbele was a part-owner in the market until 2020.

In his role as an auction market owner, Erbele often put his skills as a teacher to work, coaching farm and ranch families about the cattle market, how to improve their genetics and how to implement best management practices that would help them command a premium or avoid a discount. "I felt a great responsibility to my customers, because, for many, so much rested on that calf check," he said. Erbele felt a special connection to young and beginning farmers and ranchers, wanting them to get a good start in the industry, so he took many of them under his wing and offered them advice and encouragement.

While life was plenty busy with the demands of the family's diverse beef and farming enterprises, Erbele always felt called to serve, and he went on to leadership positions in various organizations. He is a 53-year NDSA member and represented livestock auction markets as a member of the North Dakota Beef Commission for six years, three of those as the Commission's chairman. "When you're in the auction business, you work with every sector in the beef industry and it gives you a broad perspective on what their concerns are for trying to make a living," he commented. "That helped give me perspective and direct the dollars to promote our industry through research, new product development and consumer education and leverage those funds for the benefit of our industry."

During his time on the North Dakota Beef Commission, Erbele also represented the state as a director of the Federation of State Beef Councils, as well as the U.S. Meat Export Federation. When that service was complete, he was tapped by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to serve in one of two positions to represent North Dakota on the Cattlemen's Beef Research and Promotion Board. Among his assignments: the Consumer Trust Committee, which aims to grow trust in beef and beef production through greater adoption and understanding of the industry.

Tim Petry

NDSU Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist Tim Petry was also presented with an NDSA Honorary Membership Award. Dr. Jon Biermacher, a professor of practice and Extension livestock development specialist in NDSU's Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics, summed up Petry's qualifications this way: "Tim's body of work over the past 52-plus years is a testament to his deep devotion and commitment to improving the financial, production and quality-of-life goals of cattle and sheep producers and the entire livestock industry in North Dakota and beyond."

Petry grew up on a diversified livestock operation north of Surrey, N.D. "My dad was a big believer in diversification," Petry said, and his experiences there helped set the stage for his exemplary career in livestock marketing and economics.

Petry's interest in the markets sparked somewhere in his youth. He remembers getting the Minot Daily News at home growing up - although the paper was several days old by the time it arrived at their rural location - and rushing to read the markets, the only part he had much interest in. "There was no internet back then - hardly any means of communication. But there was the newspaper," he said. The Petry family often sold cattle at the local auction market in Minot and shipped lambs to West Fargo, so those market reports were especially interesting to him.

"Prices were just a passion for me," Petry said. "I'd [read the paper and] tell my dad, 'Oh boy, it's going to be a good year! Look at the calf prices, look at the lamb prices,' and he'd say, 'Just wait until the fall when we have something to sell, and we will see what happens.' Sure enough, fall would come and calf prices were down, lamb prices were down, hog prices were down. I'd say, 'Dad, why is it that whenever we have something to sell, the prices always seem to be down?' 'Well, if you want to find out, you better go off to the 'AC,' he told me." ("AC" is short for North Dakota Agricultural College, which was renamed NDSU in 1960.)

Petry started college in 1964. Incidentally, that was also the year that live cattle futures trading began. "Nobody knew much about it, of course," Petry recalled. "They had traded grain for a long time before, but, up until then, they said you couldn't trade livestock, because you needed a storable commodity. That, of course, all changed."

Petry wanted to learn more about cattle futures and went to one of his professors to express his interest in the topic. "My teacher said, 'Well, write a term paper about it then, so we can all learn more about it,' so I did and literally got to follow the cattle futures market my entire career."

After receiving his bachelor's degree, Petry went off to the U.S. Army, stationed at its Old Guard Unit in Washington, D.C., for two years before receiving an honorable discharge and returning to NDSU for graduate school. "I certainly never intended to do that," Petry said, looking back at that time and his career discernment. "A bank back in Minot had contacted me when I was in school about an open job, and that is kind of what I thought I would be doing."

But, the trajectory changed toward the end of his time in graduate school, when his adviser told him about an opening on campus and assigned him to teach an undergraduate class. "No, thank you. I don't think I want to," Petry politely declined, but his adviser was persistent: "I am not asking you. You are going to do it."

Over the years, he has held several positions at NDSU. Following grad school, he began as a lecturer, teaching various economic courses to undergraduate students in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics. In 1973, he was promoted to assistant professor, where he focused his teaching and applied research efforts in the area of livestock production, marketing and risk management. In 1983, he was promoted again to associate professor and continued his teaching and research efforts until 2002, when he accepted the Extension livestock marketing specialist position, which he holds still today. His analysis of livestock market and risk data is used to provide Extension education programing in the areas of livestock production, marketing and risk management to producers, lenders, policymakers, legislators, commodity groups and other stakeholders.

For a lot of people, the uncertainty and unpredictability of ag economics would make it stressful, but, for Petry, those are the draws of the field. "The exciting thing about ag economics and livestock marketing is that it is not an exact science," he explained. "If you feed so much grain to a steer this year or last year or next year, within reason, you'll get the same outcome. But, when you are talking about livestock markets, the feeder cattle futures are up today $5 and maybe will be down tomorrow $5 or $9 or up $2. The market changes. It is not exact, and things will be different next year, and they will be different next month. That's what I like about. I like the uncertainty. I like the challenge. I like figuring out what's going on."

As one of only 15 Extension livestock economists in the country, Petry said he literally knows all his counterparts by first name and, because there are so few of them, they have a great responsibility to producers and students alike.

"We are in hot demand," Petry said. "For example, every month before the Cattle on Feed report comes out, the major media want estimates of what will be coming. These are like trade estimates, and they want to know how they compare with the reports after they come out. There are only two of us - Texas A&M and us - that do the university estimates for those, so we take that very, very seriously."

Petry and his colleague, Frayne Olson, also do price forecasts for the upcoming year and the upcoming five years. "Bankers use that information when their customers come in and renew their loans," he said. "We spend a lot of time on them and take that very seriously, because there is real impact there. I enjoy it, and kind of treasure it, actually."

His involvement in the NDSA has been one way Petry has continued to learn. He decided he needed to get more involved in the industry after he started his job, so he joined and set out for his first NDSA convention 48 years ago. He attended the committee meetings and was tapped to take notes for the Feeding, Marketing and Transportation Committee. Over the years, he has spoken at many conventions and Spring Roundups, penned his popular marketing column for the magazine and helped NDSA staff prepare reports for legislative and executive branch revenue forecasting committees.

Petry loves his job. "I like to think that I worked hard and made a difference," he said. He urges people to do something they love. "Don't just do something for money. My career has kind of gone by in a poof because I love what I am doing."

During that "poof," it is estimated that Petry has taught 5,600 students, advised or mentored 84 graduate students, published 56 research publications and 1,040 Extension publication and popular press articles, given 112 professional presentations and 2,600 Extension livestock marketing educational programs and obtained 56 research grants or contracts. Although impressive, these tallies are likely even on the low side, Biermacher said, because Petry stopped updating his curriculum vitae more than a decade ago.

In addition to the NDSA, Petry has been involved in several honorary ag societies, the North Dakota County Agents Association and was a charter member of the National Cattlemen's Association, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

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