04/09/2023
As I was working the freezer and packing orders Thursday I received a message from another market vendor asking if the podcast he had seen had its information correct on the beef industry. I watched it and sadly majority of it was correct. Watching it brought back the flood of memories from when we transitioned to private meat sales after being told the commercial industry no longer saw as much value in the product we produced.
The next realization I had after watching the piece was the dollar difference. The box of beef below are all economy cuts. 6lbs of burger and 4 roasts, weighing about 20lbs total. If we sold commercial beef we would receive 7.6 cents to 14 cents per dollar for our retail beef cuts. The value in this box is just over $100 but for easy figures let's say even $100. By us owning our own meat shop we keep about $80 instead of $14. With that we pay our own costs such as feed, vet fees, fuel, equipment and other costs associated with raising the animals. I did take off about $20 to account for transportation back to our farm from processing, labeling, licensing and processing to make the cost more closely similar to expenses of when we sold commercial beef.
So why does your local meat purchase help the farmer more than commercial? Because we get to keep more of that consumer dollar to pay our necessary costs. You see, the costs of raising the animals doesn't change much from commercial sales to private markets but what we are able to return to our farm, community and family are drastically different.
Support local so we can continue to supply amazing products to your table.
Sincerely your local meat producer.
