Getting started

I am creating this blog to both remind myself of everything we have thought about, good ideas and bad, as we try to get our grass finished beef business rolling, and help anyone else interested in starting a similar venture.

We bought our farm a little over two years ago and had it leased out for hay production until the fall of 2007. It was about as simple of an investment as you could have...just sit back and collect a check every 6 months. But our goals have never been limited to simply generate income. We wanted to start a business that reflected our values - values that spoke of who we are and what we hope to become. We chose the grass finished beef business because of our interest in cattle. The challenge that became all too obvious was how to grow a small business in a commodity industry. Knowing that the sustainability of a finished cattle operation even in the largest operations relied on razor thin margins, we began looking for ways to fill a niche market - one that could provide a reasonable profit from 100 head or less. In addition to profitability this niche market had to be one that would also allow us to fulfill our greater, more holistic values of preserving and improving the natural resources of our land - the water, minerals and energy that naturally cycled through our 120 acres. It had to provide us with the opportunity to sell a product that we passionately believed in and be managed in a way that we could involve our children in so that they might understand the inseparable needs of the land, water, livestock and wildlife with our need, no matter what business or industry we are engaged in, to generate profit from those resources without wasting or abusing them.

We began reading. We started with a subsciption to the Stockman Grass Farmer. This publication is a treasure of insights and ideas. After reading the first several editions of our subscription back in early 2006, we began to see an opportunity in grass fed beef that could potentially meet our criteria. We were particularly struck by articles on growing a healthier version of a common product (beef) by subscribing to management principles that by all accounts have been around for tens of thousands of years and actually reflected the inherent desire of the livestock to form herds and graze. What made it even more appealing was the empiric observation that this could be best accomplished by lowering the input costs to the livestock. Thus purchasing anything that 'rusts or rots' or does not contribute directly to the ability of the land to grow more grass or harvest more sunshine must be subjected to strict scrutiny.

Next came books...and more books. We started with a set of books by Allan Nation including: Quality Pasture, Grassfed to Finish, Pasture Profits with Stocker Cattle and Land, Livestock & Life. We also read an excellent book by Jim Gerrish called Management-intensive Grazing and followed that with a 2-day conference here in Springfield, MO put on by the Stockman Grass Farmer where Mr. Gerrish gave about 12 hours worth of lectures. We attended a second conference put on by the Missouri Extension Agency on transitioning land and livestock to organic certification.

By the time we had finished with that initial set of learning, it was April of 2007 and our minds were buzzing with ideas and questions. What type of cattle should we start with, how could we invigorate a new business and stay on top of all the other activities in our lives such as kids, work, exercise, and time with family and friends. I reflected on a comment by Allan Nation in one of his books that I thought was very insightful. He made the case, I thought persuasively, that the highest form of human activity is thinking. In other words, to develop a business requires an extensive amount of time from the owners of that business. If the owners spend their time in the production of the product, there is less time to devote to developing the product, expanding into new products, marketing, managing, setting goals for the future and reflecting on past failures. On the other hand, if the owner's time is spent in those more intellectual pursuits, it is likely that the business will find more value added since it will have leadership and direction on which to set its course. This notion is clearly obvious in larger, publicly traded companies where the upper level management of the organization spends time doing those types of things rather than working on the production or assembly line and at a wage that is significantly higher than that of the production or assemblyman. Similarly if the owner of a cattle operation spends his or her time being a cowboy, that will mean there is less time to be spent on growing the operation and making it more profitable and efficient. Thus it is the thinking, vision, management, and leadership that defines a successful operation from an unsuccessful one.

And so the hard thinking began.