Our Home Place Meat (OHPM) was established in 2017 by The Berry Center as an effort to develop a model for place-based agriculture, address the decline of rural Kentucky, and as a way to help bridge the ever growing urban- rural divide. We started with Rose Beef, a young, grass-fed beed that fit the agriculture of our place, Henry County. Farmers in Henry County and Kentucky, have traditionally weaned their cattle and sold them at the stockyards into the commodity market to be trucked out west, finished in a feed lot, and truck back as packaged meat. Rose Beef offered an opportunity to sell animals locally for a parity (fair) price in a manner that suited their farming operations and didn't ask them to make any changes.
As a result of low beef availability during Covid-19 pandemic, What Chefs Want approached us to see if we would be interested in expanding our offerings to a USDA Choice finished beef product, thus, Berry Beef, a grain-on-grass finished beed, was born. This product, however, has asked farmers to extend the amount of time the cattle remain on their farms and requires much more labor, inputs (feed), and risk for their investments. Since most Kentucky farmers sell weaned cattle, Berry Beef is a specialty, local beef product that is able to be produced in volume because of the cooperative nature of our program. We work with ten farm families to meet local demand for quality beef, as opposed to confirmed animal feedlot operations.
Since OHPM started, we've made great strides in quality and consistency by offering a price that has allowed farmers the time to farm well and make improvements to their farm practices. In mid-2023, the beef cattle prices started making a steady and historic climb to uncharted territory. We don't know how high the market will climb and we don't know when it will fall- we only know that it will fall. As a farmer and the director of OHPM, I feel conflicted about the consequences of historic wholesale and retail beef prices. I am glad that farmers, for once, have the financial advantage. We know it won't last.
Our goal for OHPM has been to offer financial stability to our farmers through contracted and parity (fair) pricing. Our position as a non-profit has allowed us to subsidize the beef cattle prices for years with the intent of building a market and forming a farmer-owned cooperative that can stand on its own, but the exponential growth of the market price has surpassed our ability to subsidize the program.
The pricing to farmers is a delicate balance between paying fairly, but competitively and strategically. My job this year has been a blur of cattle futures, cash prices, and figuring out what it takes to preserve the program and ensure we have cattle in the pipeline for the program. When recently asking one of our farmers for insights into pricing, he said if we were serious about a price increase, it needed to make up for the fact that our farmers could be netting so much more money selling animals at 800-900 pounds versus the risk, labor, and feed involved for finishing an animal for us at 1300 pounds. To keep our farmers from selling all of their weaned cattle this fall and winter into the commodity market, we're choosing to make the investment in the cattle, feed, labor, and risk now, and in turn encouraging them to stay invested in local food and restaurants, Berry Beef, Our Home Place Meat, and The Berry Center. Because what we offer is a specialty product, it's even more important to make sure our farmers remain financially whole and continue quality practices that yield quality meat.
When you purchase from Our Home Place Meat, you aren't just supporting family farms. You're also supporting the effort to keep more farmers farming, respectful land use and farming practices, and encouraging the establishment of a transparent urban- rural food system- a shared goal of healthy, rural communities feeding our urban neighbors.
Thank you for your continued support of our mission and our farmers. Our hope is to continue to provide high quality meat as long as you will allow us. These prices aren't forever. When market prices decrease, so will ours, so will yours, and we'll still have the high-quality cattle available to you.
Take Good Care,
Beth Douglas
Director, Our Home Place Meat
"Our Home Place Meat is important to us because it is ours. That it is ours means that it is locally produced and can be locally consumed. And so we local people together are spared the risks of dependence on distant suppliers and long-distance transportation."
-Wendell Berry on Our Home Place Meat
