The market for cattle has been on fire in 2014, and the market for grass-fed cattle is even better. In Sept. 2013, USDA inaugurated a Monthly Grass Fed Beef Report; the Sept. 2014 report indicated domestic slaughter grass-fed steers and heifers were bringing $275-295 per hundredweight, compared to $238-258 for grain finished slaughter cattle.
The conventional price has been setting records on a regular basis, and was just $196 in Nebraska at the end of Sept. 2013. The grass-fed price has not risen as sharply, according to Ann Wells, a partner in Ozark Pasture Beef in Fayetteville, Ark. Wells told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor the rising grain fed price has put pressure on the partnership’s own pricing decisions. “We have the philosophy that we want to provide a high-quality meat product to people at affordable prices,” she said. “We could probably increase our prices a lot more; we are certainly one of the, if not the, lowest prices in the area. But by the same token, people who raise their price to match the conventional beef price will then probably feel pressure to lower their price when the conventional beef price drops, and we don’t want to be put in that position.”
When Ozark Pasture Beef was founded in 2001, they had 11 partners; they’re now down to four. Wells said demand for calves is so strong, it’s hard for producers to justify keeping an animal on the farm the additional 12-18 months needed to finish them on grass. But, she said, “The customer demand for grass-finished meats is also extremely high… many of our customers are young families, mothers with young children. We have quite a few people that are buying our beef because of health problems. A lot of people are trying to avoid GMOs, for example, or grains of any kind.” In addition to individual consumers, Ozark Pasture sells to natural foods wholesalers and restaurants.
The partnership’s volume is down due to drought, and they only expect to butcher 32-37 cattle this year. By comparison, Dr. Patricia Whisnant of Rain Crow Ranch in Doniphan, Mo., said at any given time they’re pasturing 2,500 cattle, “but if you look at our whole operation, it goes considerably up from that.” Some of those cattle come from neighboring farms, who then share in the proceeds.
Whisnant told OFN they started experimenting about 10 or 12 years ago with direct marketing and developed their website. “The market kind of came to us,” she said. “They were looking for that type of approach – grass-fed, sustainable, no antibiotics, no hormones – all of those things that comprised how we raised our beef. So actually, we kind of fell into that part of the market when it was beginning to grow, and then we’ve grown along with it to include other farms. We now own a processing plant, and we continue to market what we do directly to customers.”
The facility is certified High Animal Welfare by a third party organization, Animal Welfare Approved. Whisnant, who has a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Tennessee, said, “When you rotate pastures and those animals are continually being put onto clean pasture, your pathogens and parasites, anything that those animals might shed, are left behind,” she said. “Have a period of time of rest on that pasture and the weathering kills out all of that, you come back to a clean pasture.”
Whisnant said in the past 10 years, as grass feeders have gained a greater appreciation of how to build quality, it has improved. “Yes, it does take a little longer,” she acknowledged, “but so many factors go into making it a quality product. Genetics; how they are handled in the finishing process as far as the forages they are able to eat; and how they are actually handled in the processing, with low stress, contribute to a quality beef.” She said while the niche for these types of products is growing, she expects grass-fed opportunities to plateau. “It has become more mainstream,” she said. “Consequently, you have a lot more people entering that segment, and you also have the competition from what I call ‘industrial ag,’ the big ag people, and they’re shipping a huge amount of that kind of beef into this country from offshore.”
But for now, according to Wells, “The market’s wide open. I am also an educator; I work with producers, teaching them how to keep their animals healthy and helping them to understand the grass-fed meat market, so I think there’s room for a lot more producers of grass-fed meat than are out there right now.”
