From Pasture to Plate: North Dakota Meat Producers’ Successes
In partnership with: North Dakota Department of Agriculture
Throwing juicy burger patties or a tender steak into our cart at the supermarket isn’t something we usually put much thought into. But when the pandemic closed large meat processors and caused shortages in stores, many producers moved quickly to sell meat directly to consumers.
Beef Profits Are No Joke
Calli and CJ Thorne operate Triangle M Ranch & Feedlot, a cow-calf operation and feedlot near Watford City. No one in four generations of Calli’s ranching family had ever considered selling directly to consumers on a large scale. So Calli thought CJ was joking one April evening when he suggested they start selling beef. “It’s very easy for a producer to just keep doing what they’ve been doing and not look for something that might work better,” Calli says. Within a week after that first discussion, the pair had applied for a retail meat license. By mid- May 2020, they’d already sold the equivalent of 40 head of beef cuts. By the end of the year, the Thornes had processed more than 120 cattle.
Their new venture has made significant financial sense for the Thornes. In 2020, average profit margins were projected to be $57 per calf, Calli says. “By using a local butcher shop and then direct marketing our beef to consumers, we were able to have an average profit of $550 per head.”
She says there’s been an emotional reward as well. “It’s fun to talk with people about what we do and why we do it,” she says. “To see the end result, our meat going to other families to help feed them, has been very rewarding.”
See more: North Dakota’s Top 10 Agricultural Commodities
Clamoring for Lamb
Joana Friesz took her retail lamb cuts to participate in a pop-up meat market at a closed Kmart parking lot in Fargo in May 2020. “When I pulled into the parking lot, it was full of cars, and I said to the friend who’d come along with me, ‘I thought Kmart was closed,’ but we got busy getting situated and didn’t think much of it,” Friesz recalls. “It wasn’t even time for us to open and all these people started coming out of these cars. It was like a scene from The Walking Dead.”
Friesz Family Farm near New Salem has raised sheep for more than 40 years. Friesz hand-makes wool items from her flocks of registered Corriedale, Border Leicester and Lincoln sheep, along with raising breeding stock. She sells frozen farm-raised lamb cuts, snack sticks and country-style sausage and brats at farmers markets, Pride of Dakota events, her local grocery store and a few specialty stores. “I wanted to promote North Dakota-raised lamb to customers,” she says of her motivation to sell retail. “People are so excited they can get locally raised lamb.”
Seizing the Opportunity
Fourth-generation rancher Ryan Fleck had sold whole and half beef and pork but had never sold farm-raised retail pork cuts until his butcher, Justin Hill, suggested it.
“He saw an opportunity because of a lack of butcher shops,” says Fleck, owner of Cross on a Bench Meats near New Salem.
Fleck sold over 100 pigs in 2020 and estimates he’ll send as many as 200 pigs to market this year. Fleck sells through his Facebook page, Pride of Dakota, and pop-up markets and delivers statewide. He says his pork retail business will cover two-thirds of his family’s living expenses this year.
At one Fargo market, Fleck sold his entire inventory in about 30 minutes, but even folks who arrived too late to purchase told him how much they appreciated the opportunity to buy direct off the farm. “That’s really rewarding to me because I get to see the person who’s buying my product,” he says. “People say they will continue to buy local, and I hope that’s true. We should all be eating as much of our own North Dakota produce, meats and other things as much as we can.”