BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - Over 2,000 ranchers from across the country and around the world gathered to attend the 72nd annual Texas A&M Beef Cattle Short Course."Kind of our theme this year is taking advantage of our market prices and so, helping producers with opportunities to improve the pounds of producing off of the ranch," Jason Cleere, coordinator of the Texas A&M Beef Cattle Short Course, said."If we look at historically, and their cattle numbers, they are the lowest, but at the same time, if you look at the tonnages of beef that we're producing, we're still up at that upper level with that," Cleere said.

"So in the way we've done that, it's through genetics, better reproduction and better fertility of our cows, nutrition, all of those factors."Cleere said that as our population grows and many other pressures gobble up our land, ranchers are going to need to continue to do more with less."It may be as simple as improving more pounds per animal as we finish them out. But also, I think we have to look at the reality is if you go in and look at the fertility of our cows, if our average calf crops 85, if we could push it another to 90% and I've got 100 cows, that's five more cows," Cleere said.

Cleere said that part of the Beef Short Course is to expose ranchers to new technologies."Some are very, very way out there. They may not adopt now, but five years from now, they may be more mainstream, and some of them are just more practical solutions," Cleere said.