Beef In The News

There has been a lot of beef in the news lately. Beef prices are high, cattle numbers are low, and now there is talk about bringing in more imported beef to help combat prices for consumers. Then, almost in the same breath, there are announcements aimed at helping American farmers and ranchers by addressing some of the processing and market-access challenges we face.

And right in the middle of all that news, we ran out of beef.

Talk about bad timing.

Thankfully, it was short-lived. Our latest beef harvest is back from the processor and our freezers are full again, but the timing of it all had me thinking about how differently these headlines look when you're actually standing on the farm raising the cattle.

Because the truth is, what happens in the news today doesn't necessarily change what happens here tomorrow. Farming, especially raising cattle, just doesn't work that fast. The beef going into our freezers right now started with decisions we were making roughly two years ago. How many cattle do we have? How much pasture can our land support? How many animals should we keep? What has customer demand looked like? How much beef do we think we'll need two years from now?

We make those decisions without knowing what cattle prices will be, what beef will cost at the grocery store, what new policies will be announced, or what the next headline will say. Then we spend the next couple of years actually raising the animal.

That's one of the things I think gets lost when we start talking about fixing beef prices quickly. You can't just turn up production next month because demand increased this month. The cattle aren't ready. The pasture isn't necessarily available. Processing appointments may already be booked. The decisions that determine how much beef is available today were made a long time ago.

There is always a catch-up effect in farming.

We chose a different path a long time ago.

Years ago, our farm made the decision to step outside of the conventional commodity system as much as we could. Instead of raising cattle and selling them into the larger system, we decided to create our own market and take on the responsibility of finding the people who wanted the kind of meats we wanted to raise.

That meant we weren't just going to be farmers anymore.

We had to figure out processing, transportation, storage, inventory, marketing, farmers markets, shipping and customer service. We had to build relationships with people and explain why we raise animals the way we do. Then we had to hope enough people valued those things to keep the whole system working.

There are certainly easier ways to sell cattle.

But creating our own market has also given us more control. We aren't raising cattle to fit into a system built around producing as much beef as possible, as efficiently and cheaply as possible. We can make decisions based on our land, our animals and the kind of food we want to put our name on.

That doesn't mean we're protected from what is happening in the larger beef industry. Far from it.

Fuel costs more. Labor costs more. Cattle cost more. Land costs more. Equipment costs more. Processing costs more. Nearly everything that goes into getting a package of beef from our pasture to your freezer has gotten more expensive.

And farming on a smaller scale doesn't give us the economies of scale that the large food system has. Especially when we aren't willing to cut corners just to make those numbers work better.

Then there is processing.

This is probably one of the least understood parts of buying meat directly from a farm.

We can't simply raise an animal, process it ourselves on the farm and then sell individual packages of meat at a farmers market, through our website or at The Farmstead. There are inspection requirements and laws that dictate where and how animals have to be processed depending on how that meat is sold.

For farms like ours selling individual cuts directly to customers, access to USDA inspected processing matters tremendously. And those facilities are few and far between.

When there aren't many processors competing for a farmer's business, it creates all kinds of challenges. There is availability and scheduling, but there is also price, transportation, logistics and quality. Sometimes the processor you would really like to use isn't the processor you can actually get into when your animals need to be harvested.

So when I see news about making processing easier for American farmers, I'm interested. We absolutely need more processing options and more competition within that part of our food system.

But I'm also realistic.

A policy announcement today doesn't create a new processor tomorrow, and the details of what farmers will actually be allowed to do matter greatly. Especially for farms like ours that sell meat by the individual cut and across different markets. There will be rules, requirements and details that have to be worked through before we know what any of it actually means for us.

Just like raising the cattle, meaningful change in processing doesn't happen overnight either.

Which brings me back to the beef in our freezer.

One of the reasons we chose this path in the first place was because we wanted more control over the food we were producing.

Our cattle are raised right here on our family farm in Southwest Michigan. They're 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. We know the pastures they grazed, how they were handled and who cared for them because we're the ones doing it.

Our beef is also processed one animal at a time. We aren't combining beef from hundreds or thousands of cattle into one product and trying to trace it backward through a complicated supply chain. That consistency matters to us.

When you buy a pound of ground beef from us, we want you to know what you're getting. We want the quality to be consistent, and we want you to know the story behind that package isn't something we created for marketing purposes. It's simply what happened before that package ever made it into the freezer.

Is our beef limited sometimes? Yes.

Running out isn't something we necessarily want to happen, but it is also part of operating within the limits of our farm. Every year we look at demand, look at our land, look at our herd and make decisions about what we think we'll need in the years ahead. Then we do our best to meet that demand without compromising the things that made us choose this path in the first place.

So what actually helps?

More people choosing to support farmers they know and trust.

Not simply buying something because it says local. Not assuming every small farm raises animals the same way. But actually finding a farmer, asking questions and learning how your food is raised.

Where did the animal live? What did it eat? Who raised it? Where was it processed? What matters to that farmer when they make decisions about their land and animals?

Then, when you find farmers whose values line up with yours, support them.

Because that support gives farmers like us something incredibly valuable: a market.

It gives us the confidence to look two years down the road and raise another animal. To keep another heifer. To improve another pasture. To make another processing appointment. To invest in another freezer, another truck or another person who helps us get that beef from our farm to your family.

That's how our little piece of the food system grows.

Not because the news suddenly tells us to produce more beef, and not because a new policy is announced in Washington, but because people continue choosing to buy food from farms they know and trust.

The good news for right now is that our latest beef harvest is back and our freezers are full again with 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef.

It may have felt like we were simply "out of beef" for a little while, but the beef coming back into stock this week has actually been about two years in the making.

And the beef we'll be selling two years from now? We're already working on that too. 

Thanks so much for being interested, thoughtful, and smart eaters who support our farm through this journey. We are grateful.

Renee and the whole team - at Jake’s Country Meats