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  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Marketing grass fed beef realities
  • Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 22:07:02 -0600

Liz Pike wrote:
> Rick, sounds like you need to rethink your product offerings. Did you do
> market research in your area before getting into grass-fed beef?

No one knows how well grass-fed beef will do long term. Although we are not
the first producers of the product, we are pretty much in the pioneering
group here in SW Wisconsin. Some other producers are located in other parts
of the state and about 5 years ago we went to the Wisconsin Grazing
Conference and sat in on the direct market beef session. We got a great deal
of help from one of the producers and used their marketing approach as a
beginning point for our farm's sales.

Remember that we already grazed dairy heifers, but that can be a fickle
market as well. Stockers are even worse. There is no way you can pay for 150
acres of land with grazing stockers since about the best you can possibly do
is an average of $100 per grazing summer per head. And some years you make a
little more and some years you actually can lose money depending upon the
rollback at the time. I detail this on our website Grazing Narrative.

So what would be a higher value product? With minimal labor or at least
labor we can handle. It is hard to find a more profitable way than direct
marketing of beef. This assumes that you really enjoy farming, enjoy
marketing, have some interest and knowledge in how to prepare marketing
materials and put it all together. We are fortunate to have that knowledge
and ability without a lot of added expense.

We are to a certain extent testing the waters to see how well a small farm
operation such as ours is able to fare in our region. We had no illusions.
No one can tell you how well things will go. We have learned as we go and
only recently found that if you go back only 15 years, it was possible to
easily direct market jersey beef and other dairy beef off the farm with just
running ads in local papers. I know one (now retired) dairy farmer who would
sell 15 head with minimal advertising. Those days are gone.

My next door neighbor discontinued direct marketing from a roadside wagon
about a year or two after we moved to this farm. He explained that around
1990 he could sell as much as $7000 from the farmstand with no one present.
Just put the stuff out and it sold and people left the money. Each year the
volume continued to drop and after doing it for 6 or 7 years he was grossing
less than $2000 and he discontinued his operation. We live in changing times
where people do not want to bother with buying off the farm since they do
not can and freeze large amounts of produce as they once did.

Could a person have done market research ahead of time and gotten accurate
information? Maybe, but that is out of my area of expertise. People will say
one thing but do something quite different. It is what people do that really
counts. Most people just find it more "normal" to buy all their groceries in
one place and usually that is the large discount supermarkets.

As I have said many times, we would do this even if we had no customers
since we want the product for ourselves as long as we can physically handle
it. When you have a product that you really want yourself, it makes it a lot
better for marketing such a product:) I have always felt that I could not
sell products that I did not believe in.

The results we get will likely affect other direct marketers decision as to
whether or not this is for them. We have talked to a fairly large number of
potential graziers who are considering doing it, but so far no one close to
us is selling the same way. They are mostly selling during a narrow autumn
window and only with split halves and larger. But maybe we will get to our
markets this summer and find some new competitors.

We will be presenting some of our information at the Wisconsin Grazing
Conference which comes up in a few weeks. We are also considering having a
farm field day this summer. Remember, that we also have a grazing agenda and
are quite active with both the state grazing organization and the GLCI
(Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative). So it goes way beyond direct
marketing.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams





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