The Natural Life - #bigmeatindustriesarezeros
Get your food straight from the source and support your local economy
Greetings Anon,
Welcome to The Natural Life where we talk about everything to do with the farm, homesteading, and just getting back to a more natural way of life. The weather is changing where I am located and I don’t know about you but I have really been enjoying spending time outdoors lately. Something as simple as the seasons changing can really put a new pep in your step, and bring back some good old memories.
Meat Prices are soaring, so today I thought we would talk about sourcing beef from local suppliers. As everyone knows, we are experiencing price inflation. It seems like the price for just about everything is going up. Especially with foods, there is a steep increase in the price of meat at the grocery stores. Everyone has noticed it, but I don’t think anyone has a real definite answer as to why certain products are experiencing sharp increases in price. I don’t think it can be pointed to just one reason, there are many problems out there with the food supply chain.
Meat Prices Rising:
I want to list a few reasons for meat price increasing here, this is not a definitive list and there are probably many more in depth economic issues that are a little over my head.
Most of these plants have hundreds of employees working closely together. If one of them tests positive for Covid 19, is showing symtoms of Covid, or someone they live with tests positive, they are forced into 2 week quarantine. For a massive operation like a meat processing plant, this could be devastating in terms of keeping the shifts running, therefore producing less. Simple supply and demand logic will tell you that when the supply drops, the price will increase.
A new law was passed in March 2021 called “The American Rescue Plan.” This bill included a federal change to the existing child tax credit law, which doubles the yearly child tax credit. Along with the tax credit increase for qualifying families, half of the credit is paid out early in the form of monthly payments. Depending on the ages of the children, this could mean up to $850 dollars per month for a family with three children. This is adding problems to the labor market for obvious reasons. (Link to the new program here.)
China (CCP) - China has quietly bought several large American meat processing corporations. (Link) China is also buying up the farmland too, I think most people know this is a bad idea, but nothing is really being done about it. Who is to say china isn’t tipping the scale against Americans through their ownership of these large packing plants. There is a mountain of issues coming from China regarding our food supply, but I’ll just leave this point alone here.
There are many other causes of the inflation and meat shortages such as the FED printing money like it’s nothing, trucking/freight driver shortages, animal feed price increases, not enough workers in the stores, fuel prices, etc. Everything added up equals a really big problem that doesn’t seem to have an end in sight.
What we can do about it:
I recently found a farming friend in the jungle BowTied Rancher. He stated he will be coming out with a substack article soon on the local market for fresh meat. His first article on locally sourced (healthy) pork was splendid, please read it here. I’d like everyone to subscribe to his substack because this is getting to be really important stuff. We all need to be able to take our food sourcing into our own hands…#bigmeatindustriesarezeros. Most people are clueless to what is going on behind the grocery store’s empty shelves, but there is no excuse for you to be like them anon!
How to source your own beef:
So to wrap this up I want to tell the story of my first purchase of half of a cow. I was talking to some jungle members who put the thought in my head to try to find a local source of some quality beef. Here is what I did…
I went on Facebook and searched for cattle owner groups in my area.
Quick Note: I really hate shilling for facebook, and I hardly ever go on it anymore. However, it’s clear, most everyone uses facebook for networking and I have found it to be the easiest way to connect with local farmers.
So after you find a few cattle owner groups, you simply post a recommendation request for someone willing to sell you some fresh beef. Make sure to specify your location. When I did this, I got at least 15 recommendations with the cattle suppler’s facebook profile with in a couple of hours. From there you will want to do your own research into the people that are close by you to see if they have any legit customers or maybe even a facebook page for their farm.
In my case, someone from high school just happened to see my post and reached out via private message. From there he explained his whole process and offered to let me try some of the meat before I purchased a half or whole cow from him.
This guy’s setup was fairly small and simple. He purchases two steers as calvs and raises them up to roughly 1000 pounds. From there he “finishes” the steer off by feeding him corn for about 30 days. Some of you may balk at this and say only to eat grass fed beef. I actually prefer a little fat on my steaks, the corn adds marbeling and fat to the meat. Let me tell you it tastes really good.
I gave him a deposit of $250 about 2 weeks before he took it to the butcher. From there he notified me that he was ready to drop the cow off at the local butcher. The butcher notified him of the final hanging weight. I then paid the cattle man $4 per hanging weight pound. The total hanging weight of the steer was 580 pounds, since I was only buying the half, I bought 290 hanging weight pounds of beef for a total of $1160.
After he dropped the steer off, the butcher called and asked me several questions about how I wanted the meet cut. Such as, how thick to cut the steaks, how big to cut the roast, what size ground beef packs, etc. I have a family of 5 with 2 small children, the oldest child is a girl, so I got everything in smaller portions, 2 steaks per pack, 2 pound ground beef packs, and smaller roasts. I got the steaks cut about an inch thick.
In short, for $1160 dollars I recieved a total of 175 pounds of finished, butchered meat consisting of sirloins, ribeye, T-Bone, Porterhouse, ribs, chuck roast, stew meat, soup bones, all of the organ meat, and 50 pounds of ground beef. This equals out to $6.62 per pound.
Here is a list of all the cuts I recieved:
Approximately 10 roasts, 14 t-bone steaks, 5 sirloin steaks, 5 sirloin tip steaks, 14 rib-eye steaks, and 6 round steaks. I also recieved short ribs, flank steak, stew meat, brisket and 50 pounds of ground beef, plus all of the organ meat, and some soup bones.
To give you a comparison, if you were to buy all of this at a grocery store you would pay approximately on average just say $10 per pound, which would have been a total of $1750, this is a low ball averege because ribeye steak per pound is running over $12.00 per pound.
You will need a freezer, for each 25 pounds of packaged beef you will need about 1 cubic foot of freezer space. So if you order a quarter of beef, you need about 5 cubic feet; for a half of a beef, you’ll need about 10 cubic feet.
And there you have it! All in all I was pleased with the finished product. You obviously want to make sure the beef is coming from a reputable dealer who is using a reputable butcher, because if not, things can go bad really quick.
If you found any of this to be interesting and need help, please reach out to me. Also if you have any other reasons as to why the food prices are soaring please drop them down below in the comments.
Yall have a good week and remember, we all gone make it.
Your Fren,
Farmer
Eatwild.com is a good source to find farms selling in your area.