In the early days of the pandemic, the shelves of supermarket meat counters were left barren at times as the country’s major meatpackers were forced to halt or reduce production. At Full Moon Farm in Gardiner, the shortfall at grocery stores meant more business than usual. Suddenly, customers accustomed to paying $4 to $5 per pound for ground beef were willing to spend nearly double.
“I had to lock my little self-service … farm store because they were coming in day and night. People were hoarding,” said Paul Colucci, owner of Full Moon Farm.
Colucci’s production doubled in 2020, but the boom was short-lived. The farm’s sales returned to pre-pandemic numbers as soon as supermarket shelves filled up again.
The Biden Administration has enlisted the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to address inequities in the meat industry and increase profitability for small meat producers. Large meatpacking companies have consolidated the market to the point where prices are set too low for small farmers to compete for supermarket presence, leaving them to sell their product in small-scale farmers’ market and direct-to-consumer models.
President Biden in a virtual address on Jan. 3 addressed the “lack of competition” that distorts the cost of meat to consumers and the prices independent farmers and ranchers are paid for what they produce.
Yet, according to some Hudson Valley animal farmers, growing a small farm’s market share in the larger meat industry is more complicated than just federal grant programs.
Few meat processing options for local farmers
Full Moon Farm in Gardiner uses a USDA facility to harvest most of their meat, the only way the farm can sell cuts of meat online or in their farm store.
Full Moon FarmAs part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the USDA announced a $500 million investment to expand meat and poultry processing capacity. The funding will provide loans, grants and technical expertise to expand opportunities in rural areas for more slaughter facilities and meat processors, infrastructure that has lagged behind the needs of small farmers for years.
In addition, another $155 million in grant money is offered to existing small processors to increase efficient production and relieve some of the financial burden of overtime inspection fees the pandemic put on processors.
For regions like the Hudson Valley, there are few options for USDA-certified facilities that can kill and process animals into meat. The number of farms in the region with animals to process outstretches the capacity that local processors can fill under current guidelines.
The obvious solution would be to build more slaughter and processing facilities, but that is not as easy as it sounds even with the financial incentives offered through the USDA.
“The red tape and the federal guidelines are just cumbersome, for lack of better words,” Colucci said. “Not to mention that … municipalities are not really fond of having a slaughterhouse in a certain zone. It’s almost impossible to site one of these things.”
There are few viable locations for a slaughterhouse that local residents would support. The financial investment is its own struggle.
When Colucci was researching building his own facility 10 years ago, a 10,000 square foot, state-of-the-art facility would have cost $3.5 million to build, he said.
The USDA loans and grant incentives would help a new business with the financial obligations but running a slaughterhouse is not a business that many people are clamoring to get into.
“You have to be a 30-year-old with energy … to want to take on something like that,” he said.
Even though there is a dearth of meat processors in the Hudson Valley and Taconic regions, some small farmers can circumvent having to take an animal to a USDA-inspected facility by selling animals directly to customers and processing on-farm under the custom-exempt directive of the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA.
“If you came to my farm and picked out that steer and paid me whatever it is that we agree on. I can actually do a farm slaughter,” Colucci said. “We could do everything for you and we would never have to go through federal inspection.”
This type of direct-to-consumer sale can be cost-effective for small farmers, but it requires the equipment, labor, and expertise of on-farm slaughtering and whole-animal butchery. Additionally, any meat processed in this way cannot be sold as a retail product — meaning cuts of meat cannot be resold to customers at a farm store or in a market.
Getting the meat to market
Chaseholm Farm lost a USDA-certified processor nearby, and now owner Sarah Chase drives three hours each way to get meat ready to sell.
Chaseholm FarmFor most farmers, on-farm processing is a purely supplemental option to the more common practice of taking animals to USDA-inspected facilities.
But in the Hudson Valley and Catskills, there are only a handful of USDA-inspected slaughter and processing facilities, leaving many farmers traveling hours.
Sarah Chase, owner of Chaseholm Farm in Pine Plains, has to travel three hours each way to bring her steers to harvest. Her previous processor was just a few minutes down the road but it stopped being USDA-certified last year.
“It doesn’t make sense to bring one cow three hours,” she said. “Instead, I have to bring four cows three hours.”
The loss of another processing facility puts more pressure on the few remaining facilities to serve farmers. More animals means more meat to sell, provided a processor has the space to accommodate the extra animals.
Luckily for Chase, the increased demand for local meat during the pandemic has continued through 2021. Yet, she can’t efficiently scale up her business in local grocery stores and supermarkets where most consumers do the majority of their meat buying. Her price point for beef is too high to be competitive.
Rather than sell at regional supermarkets like Hannford’s, Chase has used a recent food sovereignty program facilitated by the nonprofit Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming. She received $12,000 last year — market rate for her products — to supply two different local food pantries with her meat. The contract is set to be renewed this year, though the final amount has yet to be determined.
“I know exactly what these people want, like ground beef or sausages,” Chase said. “They want affordable, practical food.”
There are many unknowns when raising animals for meat and a reliable outlet for the finished product takes some of the uncertainty out of the business. Similar to community-sponsored agriculture (CSA) programs, the food sovereignty fund allows small farms, like Chaseholm, to forecast their products’ demand.
“Commitment helps you plan and grow your business without ending up taking on a ton of risk,” Chase said.
A collective solution
Creating more opportunity for small farmers in the Northeast requires more than just stimulating the regional meat processors though. It could be rethinking how small farmers work collectively.
“It’s going to take other members in the community, other investments, better infrastructure and more business networking,” said Jack Algiere, director of agriculture at Stone Barns Center. “A better network of regional hubs for farmers to work together more instead of individually.”
A cooperative, or collaborative, model of independent farmers working together could open up more opportunities in regional grocery stores. Groups of small farmers could produce a higher volume of locally raised meat and offer lower prices to regional markets. That is, if there were enough processing capacity to slaughter more animals.
Addressing the lack of regional processing capacity is step one, and the Biden Administration’s stance in the past year is admirable because it acknowledges the systemic problems of inequity with American meat production, Algiere said.
“Listen, the USDA has never really done anything that immediately helps the individual, so much as provided opportunities for the communities to engage,” he said.
Innovators and Innovations in Hudson Valley Farming
February 03, 2022 at 10:21PM
https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/makers/article/Small-meat-farmers-cant-compete-16826941.php
Small farmers still find it hard to compete with supermarket meat - Times Union
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