The perfect storm….
An old CBS News colleague, Bill Kurtis, is a mover-and-shaker in grass fed beef circles….his Tall Grass Beef company marketing nationally. But Bill thinks those of us operating at a smaller scale better not be making any big, and particularly long-range, plans.
I much admire Tom Johnston’s Meatingplace “Dry Age Beef” series on the state of the beef business in America. I would add yet another segment that as a grass-fed beef rancher and distributor is just as dark.
The perfect storm of drought, historic market prices and food safety pressures that have hit us may also mean the end of any attempt to scale up a national domestic grass-fed beef supply.
The grass-fed herd is shrinking almost before it materialized. All of the Meatingplace editor’s research applies to the small grass-fed and grass-finished industry too. But there are a few more things that the corn-fed producers and packers don’t’ have to worry about.
First, imported product. The reality is stark. New Zealand, Australia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina and Ireland, have been raising grass-fed beef for longer than they could ride a horse. In fact, the rest of the world’s livestock is grass-fed. We’re corn-fed because we have so much of the world’s corn.
An imported grass-fed product, with the same attributes as ours, can sell for nearly a dollar per pound less than we can. Even the most patriotic retailer who wants U.S.A. beef is hard pressed to pay that much more when his competitors are undercutting him.
A producer is equally hard pressed to raise an animal only on grass for 24 months when he could get the same premium as a corn-fed commodity at current historic highs after only 16 months.
Finally, a few of us—grass-fed and grass-finished companies—have created a market for healthier beef. Customers now ask for it in such numbers that many, if not most, major retailers are stocking it.
I’ve been telling our story for eight years, including grass-fed beef’s attributes of more Omega-3s, CLA, Vitamins A & E and less cholesterol, calories and saturated fat. The public has been listening and wants it.
Now, just when the consumers are showing up in good numbers, after struggling through a recession, drought and a Jack and the Beanstalk beef market, we have finally cultivated a grass-fed market in America; but it appears we have cultivated it for our dear neighbors (down under and across the pond) to enjoy.