Right now, what we have is the equivalent of a public transport system that is comprised of two buses. Two buses can only transport so many people, so to make a profit they have to raise prices, which in turn makes people less inclined to use it. Public transportation is only efficient when there is an initial huge investment and a willingness to gradually reduce that debt over decades in order to consistently expand their clientele. Small-scale farmers need to make a profit this year, not in 40 year’s time, so they have difficulty justifying taking a loss of income in order to slowly build an extensive customer base.

Another problem is the growing disparity in income within the U.S. Wages for 95% of Americans have stagnated for 37 years. Wages for the top 1% have skyrocketed during that time. In many urban areas, you have a coterie of consumers who are willing to pay outrageous prices for their favored food items; if a supplier raises his prices by 50% he will still benefit monetarily even if he loses 30% of his consumers. And even then, the most price-conscious consumers are likely to be buying less meat than the ultra-affluent consistent purchasers; chances are he could lose half his customers, still suffer a loss of only 25% in demand, and improve his income (at least in the short term). Some might call this unethical price-gouging, but most people would have trouble justifying making less income in order to serve a wider customer base. Farming is a business; the enjoyment and pride in a well-run operation are the perks.

A third issue is that many biodynamic/pasture-focused farmers are first-time land owners. It’s the same reason great California wines tend to be so much more expensive than great European wines — many of the European vintners are growing grapes on land that has been in the family for generations, while many California grape-producers are using leased land, purchased within the last few decades. With ranchers/pastoralists, there is also a lack of ‘commons’ available for grazing. In small communities in Europe (e.g. Pyrenees of Spain, Switzerland) there are mountainous highlands not owned by any single rancher which provide forage for ungulates from late spring through autumn. In essence this is free land. As far as I know, most American ranchers do not have access to public land for grazing (perhaps there are exceptions in underpopulated areas of the Mountain West?), so they either need to invest much more in land, or reduce production.

Right now part-time farming/ranching is probably the smartest way to go, both for producers and consumers. A successful meat purveyor in Arlington, VA (from Winchester) not only sells a wide variety of meat and offal, he also sells homemade pasta, homemade sauces, and operates a B&B advertised as being set in a pastoral paradise. With multiple income streams his liquidity situation is better (making him less worried about periodic losses in any one area) and he can afford to make less annual income off the meat sales.

In my area, we have a goat dairy farmer who sells goat cheese, goat-milk soap, some vegetables, and a wide variety of seafood. He also leads periodic paid tours of the farm. Again, with an extensive variety of products and income he feels more financially secure, which helps control price inflation.

There’s a number of ways that the U.S. could rachet up consumption of pastured meat. First, by acknowledging that moving away from CAFO structures would improve the environment, improve public health, and create less of a moral dilemma of treating animals as commodities rather than sentient living beings (de-legitimizing the dignity of animals tends to percolate into a culture of cruelty, which in turn reduces social trust and hence real productivity, IMHO). It could provide low-interest loans to support the creation pasture-oriented farms; create institutional centers of knowledge to create easily-accessed best practices for such farmers (rather than focusing on catering to Cargill); subsidize low-input (less irrigation, no pesticides/herbicides, less fertilizer) high-quality animal-forage agriculture (barley, millet, etc.) that is unsuitable for human consumption in order to make healthy feed for pastured animals more affordable. I’m sure there are dozens of other initiatives that small-scale farmers could come up with.

Unfortunately, given our increasingly dysfunctional national government I find these solutions unlikely in the near future. We are caught in a historical double-bind: our government sponsors cheap industrialized food, which makes it popular compared to the more expensive artisan producers; and thus localism is suppressed and never becomes a credible alternative to the Cargill guys.

Yes, there are places where farmers can and do charge a fortune for their grass-fed organic products and still manage to sell them. Where I live, however, that just doesn’t fly. Our town is blue collar, and people are very price conscious. I have to keep my prices as low as I possibly can, which suites me just fine, as long as I can pencil out a sustainable profit in the long run.

I know how hard it can be to make ends meet, as I have never had a lot of money. I want folks like myself to be able to afford to eat well. Yet, that often means that they will have to make sacrifices like we do. Our wages from our farm, and outside work, are under the average for the area, yet we still manage to eat almost every meal made from local and/or organic ingredients. The key is we make all our own meals, and are very choosy about what we eat. We go out to eat maybe 3-4 times per year.
We avoid junk food, and soda pop. We eat very well, but it takes work.

As a farmer and direct marketer of grass-fed beef, I can now attest to the fact that you have to carefully include every cost you can think of into your cost of production and projections. It can become very complex, especially when direct marketing is included. I have given presentations to farmers about how I calculate costs, and their eyes invariably glaze over, because there is so much to it. I try to track every expense, including my time. If I don’t my natural tendency is to underprice my products, which could too easily drive me out of business. I would not be doing my customers any favors by selling meat too cheap, if I can’t afford to come back next year.

I fully agree with all of Walter’s comments about the costs of doing business and not undercutting yourself in price. As we scale up we can lower costs somewhat, but this takes years to do. It has taken Salatin 27 years of direct marketing and lots of noteriety to get to the scale he is at today. After seven years of operating our own farm, we still aren’t selling 50 steers/year.

Yes, if I could scale up to where I ship a truckload of steers to a large beef processor every week, I could literally save as much as $300 per steer in trucking and processing costs. But how many years will it take me to get there? I can quickly crank up the volume of what I produce. I just can’t crank up the customer base quickly. It takes lots of time and lots of talking to people, one on one education, at farm markets and other venues. I wish it were a faster process, but it isn’t.

Our beef is more expensive than grocery store beef, but only by 10-20%–except for the fire sale, loss leaders grocery stores do. Like Walter I try to encourage people to
people to east less meat, but choose better quality. Why do people need to eat a 1/2 lb burger, when a 1/4 lb will do? Why do they need a 16 oz steak, when 8 oz is plenty of nutrients for the average person? Instead of supersizing we should encourage superiorizing your food–OK, I made up that word. Eat better meat, less of it, and make up the difference with good vegetables and fruit.

Commit to buying as much good locally raised grass-fed and pastured meats that you can. Overall prices will come down somewhat in most regions as competition increases and as the scale increase, which will reduce costs. You will spend more for food, and less for medical care, as already noted above. Ask yourself where would you rather spend your money, at the pharmacy or farm market? Who would you rather support, the fat cats at Pfizer or your local farmer? Ultimately, you decide if you want to keep us in business or not.

It just doesn’t seam right that the consumers should be “punished” for making good for you decisions. At the time I wondered why the price was so high (other than supply and demand) since natural organic farmers don’t need to use extra chemicals and additives – and “back in the day” when all livestock was grass fed there wasn’t this overly high price to pay for our food. This post was a very informative read. I now have a better understanding on the why.. still it is sad that farmers who produce healthy good for you food have to suffer along with the rest of us consumers. Hopefully change is in the works since more and more people are being turned on to organic products.

Earth Friendly Goodies

in the long run it all comes down sadly to the doller…

why couldnt the world run on the old systems of fair trade and barttering goods.

an not trade in paper and metals

If we considered the work and sacrifice that goes into raising meat carefully and humanely, maybe the high prices wouldn’t seem so high. Maybe we’d choose to eat a variety of meat cuts–and less of them.

And maybe we’d demand advocacy for small farmers, change key labor and food laws and make it easier and less costly for small farmers to produce sustainable food.

Speaking strictly as a consumer, I’m glad to pay higher prices for meat raised humanely by a farmer I know and trust.

On a side note, regarding on-farm slaughter: One option might be advocacy for on-site mobile slaughter units like the ones available here in New York State.

The farmers at Sap Bush Hollow Farm, from whom I buy my grassfed meat, were instrumental in initiating NY’s mobile slaughter units a few years ago. I believe this is by far the most humane way to slaughter farm animals as it spares them the trauma of loading, transport and slaughter at distant meat packers.

Incidentally, Sap Bush Hollow recently went one better: Their farm is now certified as a slaughter house.

It CAN be done.

Lorraine

Fluffy2002