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Know your farmer…
…was never more true if you care about the food you eat. In recent years, organic and natural foods have begun to take a small slice of the household budget. It’s still minuscule compared to the total spent on groceries and eating out. But Big Ag and it’s allies in the chemical industry have taken notice of the upstart…and with the support of the government, they’ve been fighting back…muddying the water with deceptive labeling and advertising. A farmer just north of us in Chambersburg, PA finally had enough the other day and exploded on his website. https://yourfamilyfarmer.com/blog/double-agent With the connivance of Washington, we can no longer trust claims…
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The danger of Super-Sizing…
It’s been some years now since Michael Pollin set the beef industry on its ear with his article in the New York Times expanded into the book The Omnivores Dilemna. Speaking in England…Pollin pulls back the curtain on the real story behind McDonalds French fries…or as they’re called over there…chips! David
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Mama…don’t let your kids grow up….
….to be farmers. It’s still a no-win game despite all the publicity about the Locavore movement, farm-to-fork, food hubs, CSAs. “blah-blah” stuff. The dirty little secret is the Big Guys are killing us….and they’re the ones getting the subsidies and grants that enable them to further squash the idealists. The New York Times had the story this past weekend. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/dont-let-your-children-grow-up-to-be-farmers.html?_r=1 Thanks to Dr. Sue Beal for the link.
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US cattle herd shrinks still more…
The number of cattle in the United States has plunged to the lowest it’s been since 1951. That’s more than 60 years that the beef supply has been this low. For cattlemen that have been able to stick it out through high feed and energy costs—and droughts—this is good news in the short run. It means of course that cattle prices will continue to set records. But since that will chase consumers to other choices, it’s not so good. The only bright spot in the report is the news that farmers are starting to hold onto their heifers….that adds to the short supply but indicates an eventual turn-around. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LIVESTOCK_INVENTORY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-31-16-46-54
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The processing conundrum….
….the largest single cost in producing local meat, whether beef or pork, is the processing. Butchering your meat is just about half the total cost. We reported awhile back that the bill for processing a steer into beef is very close to $500. That compares to the $50 the Giants pay at the huge, factory meat-packing plants. It’s not that the local butchers are getting rich. It’s a matter of scale. They have to hire full-time crew to handle a sporadic supply as small farmers finish their animals. And butchering itself is something of a “lost art”. We’re very fortunate here to have a choice of many butchers (some dare…
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Slow food a “hot” investment?
Apparently some folks like to think so. And there’s a group looking for investors to invest in sustainable agriculture. Most of the people who have developed small scale, but profitable companies specializing in healthier foods find they can’t compete against the “big guys” who move in and threaten to crush them. So far, those small companies have just given up and sold out to the highest bidder (who proceeds to corrupt the brand). Farmers, by and large, are terrible businessmen and worse marketers. In fact, they’re repelled by the idea they should have to sell their products. But for those out there who are still interested in making the “fight”, there’s…
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Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef (continued)….
We could call this Exhibit A in our discussion. Someone who is making money with a small grass fed beef farm. If you want to begin at the beginning, scroll down to the roundtable that featured four men with wide experience in all phases of grass fed beef marketing….local to national…operating solely or in combination with others. But, to see what a “practioner of the trade” would say about all this, we sought out Guille Yearwood of Ellett Valley Beef Company in southwest Virginia. Guille is both a pure bred Devon breeder and commercial cattleman and is a member of the board of the American Devon Cattle Association. Whether you’re…
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Still more on marketing grass fed beef….
….my recent post on the price disadvantage American producers face when competing against foreign grass fed beef (see below “Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef) needs some fine tuning. My point was that I pay almost four times as much for butchering as my competitor in Tasmania. And so foreign beef can absorb the shipping costs and still undersell American beef. But my good friend Bill Roberts of 12 Stones Grasslands Beef files a mild disagreement (that’s what friends are for, to tell you when you’re wrong. Mildly.) Bill says we’re not up against price competition alone. As I understand it, price is not the main issue in…
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Are food hubs part of the answer….
….we recently hosted a roundtable on the problems smaller producers face in marketing their grass fed beef. (see below, “Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef”) We were a bit surprised that farmers markets didn’t come up. Several cattlemen we know have tried them and generally found them useful in building a customer base. Eventually, they tired of the commitment, of being tied-down every weekend, and settled for marketing from their farm. A better solution might be so-called “Food Hubs”, which are really a higher octane version of farmers markets. They have legal structure, and financial underpinning, but again require a real commitment from the participants. By coincidence the USDA…
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The “low cost” of beef….
….well, if you import it from Tasmania anyway. Our recent round-table discussion opened up a number of avenues that the “old reporter” in me couldn’t resist. One was the discovery that US Wellness, the largest marketer of grass fed beef on the Internet, was importing some of its meat from Tasmania. (Yes, I had to look on a map, too. It’s about 100 miles south of Australia.) Turns out their northern soil is practically perfect for grazing. Couple that with low wages and low land costs, throw in cheap shipping on boats returning to the States that would otherwise be empty, and you can see what American producers are up…