What, when, how and why

We needed to translate our passion and ambition for raising grass fed beef to a marketable product. Since the only necessary and sufficient element of any business is a customer we began looking for who our customer(s) might be. This was not as obvious as it would seem. For example there are feedlots looking for stocker cattle. Marketing to that customer with either a cow-calf operation or stocker feeding wasn't exactly in line with our ideals since what we wanted was to place a unique and healthier product on the dinner table of the end user. We discussed custom grazing or backgrounding cattle from other ranchers. Pursuing that customer also seemed unsatisfying as once again we couldn't control the end product. Perhaps the utlimate direct customers are the ones sitting directly around us. There are many accounts of grass farmers that market their meat products direct to consumers in their community. For us though, this did not make much sense. What we think we can be very good at, what we are passionate about, and what drives our economic engine is producing a high quality, grass finished beef carcass. What we are not as passionate about is advertising, marketing, logistics, and processing that carcass. For our purposes, that seemed like a job better left to those who did feel passionate about those things.

We then started looking at two companies that market grass finished beef directly to consumers - Tallgrass Beef and American Grassfed Beef. These two companies are within a reasonable distance from Springfield and are in the business of processing and marketing the product that we are passionate about producing. We contacted Tallgrass first. Initially what we heard sounded promising. People from that organization would help us find and select the right type of feeder cattle for our purposes and then buy them from us at a premium provided that the cattle met the live ultrasound data required by their customers. This seemed great until we started getting feedback from people who had dealt with them in the past. Apparently Tallgrass has promised more than they have been able to deliver in terms of a market for grass finished beef. As a result, two cow-calf producers that I spoke with had disassociated with Tallgrass and warned me to do the same.

I then spoke to Mark Whisnant from American Grassfed Beef. They run a very similar type of operation as Tallgrass and will help with finding, selecting, and growing grass fed cattle and then will purchase grass finished cattle for their abbatoir and customers. We will wait and see if they are able to deliver on their promises to do what Tallgrass apparently has not been able to do.