The Young Cattlemen’s Conference (YCC) was the long-time dream of George Spencer.  Before he left NCA, he put together a program to bring in young cattlemen.  The first trip in 1980 was called the YCC Traveling Conference.  Spencer described why he set up the YCC traveling program:

For several decades, young cattlemen felt they were not listened to, and the various things tried had not satisfied them.  So I designed a program, copied after the old Swift Trips, which had been so popular and successful from 1932 to 1972.  The idea was to identify and train potential young leaders for the industry.  The Swift Trips typically took 30 or so industry leaders by train, and later by plane, to Chicago , Boston , New York and Washington to study distribution and marketing of meat, and to visit with congressmen.  Then, at the Association convention, they would have a reunion of the previous “Trippers,” often attended by more than 200 leaders.

Since 1980, more than 500 young cattlemen have made the YCC tour, most calling it “the best educational experience of my life.”  Two graduates of the original 1980 YCC trip have figured prominently in the Association; Dan Koons became NCA President in 1994 and Chuck Schroeder served as NCBA CEO from 1996 to 2002.

Tour members are selected by their state and breed affiliates and are usually potential industry leaders under the age of forty.  Recent tours have typically spent a week on the road starting at the NCBA headquarters in Denver, making stops by Swift & Company headquarters, a feed-yard in Kansas, a packing plant in South Dakota, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a seedstock operation in Virginia and ending with a trip to the Nation’s Capital to visit NCBA's Washington D.C. office, USDA, the Capitol, the White House, the Dept. of the Interior, and much more.