Mike Pearson tells listeners about a move in the beef industry to incorporate technology into grading beef.

The USDA Remote Carcass Grading Pilot Program is being created to help smaller processors get their beef graded as prime, choice or select.

Almost 100 years ago, February 4, 1924, the Agriculture Products Grading Inspections Act which features a free beef grading program. The idea is to give consumers a great eating experience.

Then in 1946, fees were added to the process to cover the cost for meat graders and this hurt those in rural areas due to the cost of travel.

Now with the USDA Remote Carcass Grading Pilot Program, the hope is that technology can make it a simpler and more cost effective program.

A processor would upload the beef picture to the Cloud then a trained grader would examine it and determine the grade.

There would be a cap of 100 carcasses per facility per week.

The program is expected to reduce the cost from $400 to $4.56 per carcass grading.

Farm Progress America is a daily look at key issues in agriculture. It is produced and presented by Mike Pearson, farm broadcaster and host of This Week in Agribusiness.