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Direct Marketing Meat & Animal Products
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Nutritional tests on meat
from Buffalo Groves in Colorado found the cuts were significantly
lower in calories and cholesterol than grain-fed bison meat,
providing a marketing angle for David and Marlene Groves. –
Photo courtesy of Buffalo Groves |
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After years of watching feed prices rise and pork prices fall and
wondering how they could stay profitable, Denise and Bill Brownlee
of Wil-Den Family Farms in Pennsylvania decided in 2002 to exploit
what they saw as a market advantage – their outdoor production
system where hogs farrow and finish on pasture without growth stimulants
and with minimal antibiotic use.
Given the time commitment involved in direct marketing, the Brownlees
started by scaling back from 170 sows to 60, aiming to sell 900
to 1,000 animals a year at a premium price. Over the past several
years they’ve explored a variety of direct marketing strategies.
A SARE grant enabled them to partner with a local nonprofit group
to test a subscription service for meat, in which up to 100 members
would purchase annual shares of pork chops, sausages, bacon and
ham.
What they found was that customers were more comfortable with monthly
meat subscriptions than with annual meat shares. “We tried
to pattern it after how people are used to buying from vegetable
farmers: paying upfront,” Denise Brownlee says. “For
whatever reason, they were hesitant to commit.” Their experience
shows that translating marketing strategies from one type of product
to another can require some tweaking.
Decades ago, most meat and animal products were sold directly to
customers, but all that changed with the advent of the modern feedlot-to-wholesale
system. Recently, consumer concerns about nutritional health, food
safety and animal welfare have spurred renewed interest in buying
animal products directly from the source. Producers, meanwhile,
see the value of re-connecting to consumers.
Making the most of your direct marketing efforts requires being
able to explain to customers why your product is better than what
they can find in their local supermarket. To make specific nutritional
claims for your product, consider getting samples tested by an independent
lab. With a SARE producer grant, David and Marlene Groves tested
their 100-percent grass-fed bison meat, which they sell directly
from their Colorado ranch. They learned that the meat was slightly
lower in fat and significantly lower in calories and cholesterol
than the standard published values for bison meat.
“It’s very hard to confidently market your product
if you don’t completely understand it,” Groves says.
“Most buffalo for sale in the supermarket is grain-fed, and
it’s much fattier.” Once customers understand the difference,
they often are more inclined to buy Buffalo Groves meat.
Another expanding market opportunity for sustainable livestock
producers centers on health. Health care practitioners and individuals
seeking to improve their diets in response to concerns about chronic
disease, pain syndromes and various disorders are fueling demand
for better quality meat. The University of North Carolina Program
on Integrative Medicine used a SARE grant to compile a directory
of locally raised, grass-fed livestock products after receiving
repeated requests for such information from holistic health care
providers in the area. Part of their research included sources of
meat with desired levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
For livestock producers facing an increasingly concentrated market
with a few large processors controlling prices, direct marketing
offers the opportunity to retain a greater share of product value.
Marketing meat and animal products, however, means making food safety
issues paramount. (See box with more
information about animal product labeling and claims)
Provide cooking instructions, especially for grass-fed meats,
which require lower cooking temperatures than conventionally produced
meat – “low and slow,” as Texas rancher Peggy
Sechrist likes to describe it. If possible, provide samples. With
a quality product, sampling can be the most effective form of marketing.
Jim Goodman of Wonewoc, Wis., began direct-marketing organic beef
not only to increase profits, but also to talk with and educate
his customers about sustainable beef production. After 16 years
of selling to packing companies, Goodman now delivers beef to restaurants,
a farmers market and directly to friends and neighbors. Customers
are getting used to ordering by e-mail in the winter, so direct
marketing continues during the winter through scheduled deliveries.
“Traditionally, farmers never see their customers,”
says Goodman, who regularly drives 75 miles to Madison to deliver
beef. “It’s nice to be able to hand your customers a
package of burgers with tips on how to cook it and be able to tell
them how the animals are raised.”
When he takes a 1,500-pound steer to the packing plant, he receives
about $1,000. That same animal brings $2,500 minus about $450 in
processing costs, when he sells it directly.
“People are willing to pay more for direct-marketed organic
beef,” he says. “Once you get regular customers, you
develop a friendship with them. Then people start talking about
buying meat from ‘my farmer.’ It really is the way marketing
should be done, the farmer delivers a quality product, and the consumer
is happy to pay them a fair price, everyone wins.”
Cooperatives provide another route for direct marketing meat. In
2001, a group of Iowa livestock producers launched Wholesome Harvest,
a cooperative featuring organic meat sales in five Midwest states.
Co-op founder Wende Elliott, who raises lamb and poultry, got a
grant from SARE to research the potential -- since realized with
steady sales. “Only by working together can farmers protect
the added value of organic meat and capture premium prices,”
Elliott says. (See p. 15 for more information on co-ops
and promoting meat to ethnic markets.)
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