“Making It Work” is a series about small business owners trying to make it through tough times.
While many people can conjure up romantic visions of a Montana ranch—wide valleys, cold streams, snow-capped mountains—few understand what happens when the cattle leave these pastures. It turns out that most of them don’t stay in Montana.
Even here, in a state with nearly twice as many cows as people, only about 1 percent of the beef purchased by Montana households is raised and processed locally, according to estimates from consulting firm Highland Economics. Like the rest of the country, many Montanans instead eat beef from places as far away as Brazil.
Here’s a common fate for a cow that starts out on Montana grass: It’s purchased by one of the four dominant meat packers — JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Marfrig — that process 85 percent of the country’s beef; transported by a company like Sysco or US Foods, distributors with a combined value of over $50 billion; and sold at Walmart or Costco, which together account for about half of America’s grocery dollars. Any rancher who wants to break out of this system – and, for example, sell their beef locally instead of selling it across the country as an anonymous commodity – is a David in a swarm of Goliaths.
“The beef packers have a lot of control,” said Neva Hassanein, a professor at the University of Montana who studies sustainable food systems. “They tend to have a huge impact on the entire supply chain.” For the country’s ranchers, whose profits have shrunk over time, she said, “It’s kind of a trap.”
Cole Mannix tries to escape this trap.
Mr. Mannix, 40, tends to wax philosophical. (He once considered becoming a Jesuit priest.) Like members of his family since 1882, he grew up raising livestock: baling hay, helping give birth to calves and leading cattle into the highlands on horseback. He wants to ensure that the next generation, the sixth, has the same opportunities.
In 2021, Mr. Mannix co-founded Old Salt Co-op, a company dedicated to changing the way people buy meat.
While many Montana ranchers sell their calves less than a year old to the multi-billion dollar industry never to be seen or profited from again, Old Salt’s cattle never leave the company’s hands. Livestock are raised on Old Salt’s four member farms, slaughtered and processed at the meat processing facility, and sold through the ranch-to-table restaurants, community events and website. The ranchers who own the company benefit at every stage.
The technical term for this approach – in which a company controls different elements of its supply chain – is vertical integration. Many small meat companies don’t attempt this because it requires a large amount of upfront capital.
“These are scary times,” Mannix said, citing the company’s high debt levels. “We’re really trying to invent something new.”
But he added: “No matter how risky it is to start a company like Old Salt, the status quo is riskier.”
It would have been much easier for Old Salt to just open a meat processing plant, as some ranchers have done, and not bother with restaurants and events. (In fact, that’s where much of the national attention is focused: The White House recently committed $1 billion to independent meat processors, citing a lack of competition from big meat processors.)
But Mr. Mannix said that would not have solved the other problem facing ranchers: the difficulty of gaining access to dealers and customers. “It doesn’t matter if you have a good processing facility if you can’t sell the product,” he said. “You can’t rebuild the food system by just throwing a lot of money at one component of that food system.”
Old Salt is his attempt to rebuild the whole damn thing.
And people are taking note. “Old Salt is a beacon,” said Robin Kelson, executive director of Abundant Montana, a nonprofit that promotes local food. “They show the rest of us that it is possible to make the system work by combining companies and working together in creative ways.”
On a recent Saturday, downtown Helena’s newest restaurant, Union, was bustling with activity. The wood grill sizzled while guests ate steaks and short ribs. In the front, a butcher’s display case gleamed with bacon and breakfast sausages. Everything came from Old Salt member farms.
This restaurant-slash-butcher shop is Old Salt’s newest venture. It joins the Outpost, a burger stand in a 117-year-old bar, and the Old Salt Festival, a food- and music-filled celebration of sustainable agriculture at Mannix Ranch in late June, now in its second year. This is in addition to the company’s meat processing facility and subscription meat program.
Andrew Mace, co-founder and culinary director of Old Salt, probably wouldn’t recommend starting five companies in three years. But he said it was all part of the company’s “very ambitious plan to reimagine the local meat industry.”
While Mr. Mace wants all of Old Salt’s operations to make a profit, their primary purpose is to serve as a marketing tool for the meat subscription service: to get diners to fall in love with the Union rib-eye dish and then sign up for the meat subscription The company’s “Steak and Chop Bundle” is delivered every month.
Old Salt’s goal is to sell meat to 10,000 families annually over the next five years, up from about 800 now. It won’t be easy: Americans are used to buying ground feed at the supermarket, not on a website.
“It just takes a lot to get into people’s spending habits,” Mr. Mace said, “and make them realize that you’re not just buying meat, you’re investing in the local landscape.”
This is important to Mr. Mannix. He carefully selected Old Salt’s members from more than 9,000 ranches across the state because they share his commitment to regenerative livestock farming, a set of principles aimed at replenishing soils and reducing the environmental impact of cattle.
His overall goal is to put more money into the hands of these ranchers so they can invest more time and money in managing their land. (In total, Old Salt’s ranches cover more than 200,000 acres, a parcel larger than Shenandoah National Park.)
Because of this, Old Salt ranchers own the majority of the company and share in the profits. “We didn’t want to be a meat company that buys livestock from ranchers and ultimately, as it grows, has an incentive to pay as little as possible for that livestock,” Mannix said. “This leaves less money to pay for the time needed to truly care for ecosystems.”
Uniting four ranches under one brand has also allowed members to pool their products and marketing resources rather than compete against each other.
“It takes some courage to do what they do, but we need people like this at the top to lead the way,” Dr. Hassanein, professor at the University of Montana. Although it may seem ironic given that beef production accounts for nearly 9 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, she said she supports these ranches precisely because she cares about wildlife and the environment.
“These are well-known ranches; Many of them are award-winning conservationists,” said Dr. Hassanein. “If they can’t survive economically, we really have to ask ourselves what will come in their place.”
It’s a question that has also been asked by many of Old Salt’s ranchers, who are struggling with both economic and environmental constraints. As Cooper Hibbard, a fifth-generation rancher and chairman of Old Salt, put it: “It’s clear from all angles that we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing or we wouldn’t have any more ranch to spend “could.” to the next generation.”
“We’re trying to design a new model,” he said. “We’re really going for the fences.”
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2024-06-13 04:00:22
www.nytimes.com
