Posts Tagged: meat marketing
Back to Basics
"Over the last several years, I've become convinced that being stuck in the middle scale-wise is incredibly challenging. While I've written about this struggle numerous times, I've never written as concisely or as eloquently as Mr. Parry. "You are," he says, "somewhere between a real business and a self employed Mom and Pop operation. There is never enough money or enough time." By contrast, small operations subsidize their living expenses with off-farm jobs. "You believe in the benefit of what you are doing," he writes. "Because of your belief system, it is worth it.... You have little time and money to spare, but you persevere."
Parry talks about reassessing his farm's assets - his "unfair advantage." In his case, his family decided that it was the fact that they owned "1100 acres of verdant green irrigated pastures that [are] one of a kind in our dry southwest climate." While their livestock operation is going back to a commercial (as opposed to direct-market) approach, the Parry's are "selling the view" - developing agricultural tourism enterprises to compliment commercial sheep and cattle production.
Given our own struggles to come to terms with the challenges of scale, I can imagine that Mr. Parry and his family also resisted the decision to shut down the direct marketing part of their operation. However, his article ends on a positive note. "Fox Fire Farms still has all the livestock.... What has changed is that it is back to low cost, commercial production." Partly because of our ongoing drought, we're headed in the same direction this year - we don't anticipate direct marketing any meat from this year's lamb crop. Parry concludes, "A correctly structured commercial livestock enterprise has a lot going for it, not the least of which is time for life's other priorities." I find this statement especially encouraging as I head out to check sheep before driving to town to watch my oldest daughter's varsity soccer match.
In some ways, the changes at Flying Mule Farm have been forced on us - by the dry winter and by the economic realities of mid-scale livestock production. These last several years have been stressful, as regular readers of this blog will no doubt acknowledge. Mr. Parry's article has helped me realize that we haven't been alone in this struggle. His ability to make positive changes to his operation that allow him and his family to make "time for life's other priorities" is incredibly reassuring and liberating.
Over the coming weeks, I plan to share some of our thought processes regarding our own "unfair" advantages and what they mean for the future of our business. I hope my handful of readers will weigh in with their own insights and experiences! Thanks to Richard Parry for stating the obvious: "Everyone does not have to be a direct marketer of meats."
Niche Meat Marketing Workshops Being Held at the PlacerGROWN Farm Conference
The PlacerGROWN Farm Conference will feature two workshops on niche meat marketing for farmers and ranchers. The theme of the 2013 PlacerGROWN Farm Conference is Survive and Thrive. This conference will be held Saturday, January 26th at Lincoln High School from 8:00 AM – 3:00 PM. The conference is co-sponsored by UC Cooperative Extension and PlacerGROWN. Additional support is provided by USDA Risk Management Agency and CDFA Specialty Crops Block Grant. The workshops will cover the following information:
Are you in the Livestock Business or the Meat Business?
Do you want to raise and market meat products? Or would you rather raise animals and market them at a premium without having to market meat? This workshop will walk through the production, processing and marketing considerations for ranchers who are considering marketing meat directly to customers.
The Cost of Adding Value – Does Marketing Meat Make Economic Sense?
Can you actually make more profit by selling meat rather than selling live animals? Three experienced producers will walk us through economic analyses of selling meat at farmers’ markets, directly to restaurants and through specialty retail outlets.
These workshops will be part of 10 workshops to be held on January 26th at Lincoln High School, located in Lincoln,CA. For more information, including registration, visit either http://placergrown.org/wp/ or http://ucanr.org/sites/PGFFC, or call PlacerGROWN at (530) 889-7398 or UC Cooperative Extension at (530) 889-7385.
Scholarship information is available at: http://ucanr.edu/sites/PGFFC/