For Black Dog Farm in Livingston, Montana, the early COVID lockdowns were a boon for business.
“It’s undeniable that the pandemic had a huge positive effect on our business,” said co-owner Kira Jarosz. “We’re out of chicken every week.”
Over the last three years, Jarosz and her husband Tim Anthony have seen a massive uptick in demand for their locally raised chicken and pork. Last year, they ran out of retail chicken by December and had a gap of six months before their first slaughter date in June.
“I think the increased interest had already started, but the pandemic put fuel on the fire,” said Matt Skoglund, owner of North Bridger Bison in Wilsall, Montana. Skoglund harvested nearly a bison a week out in his pastures last year to meet consumer demand. (Photo credit: Anthony Pavkovich)
Despite the state’s $4 billion-plus agricultural economy, only 3 percent of the food Montanans eat is produced there, down from 70 percent in the 1950s, according to a 2022 report from Highland Economics. Operating within an increasingly consolidated and globalized market, most of Montana’s commodity crops—beef, wheat, barley, safflower, lentils, and chickpeas—get exported out of state.
Producers like Jarosz are working hard to change this figure by raising, slaughtering, and marketing their own meat. At the same time, they are bringing transparency to how meat is raised and brought to dinner tables throughout Montana.
“There are not many people, particularly around here, that are raising thousands of chickens,” Jarosz said. “There aren’t replicable systems for doing this.”
“When the pandemic first hit, we had a huge influx in demand,” said Jaimie Stoltzfus, owner of Cowgirl Meat Co. in McLeod, Montana. “At the same time, we hit a wall with processing.” Despite the increased demand for local food and transparency in the food system, Montana’s infrastructure limits when and where producers can harvest their animals. (Photo credit: Anthony Pavkovich)
Instead of selling to a big meat packer or corporate distributor, Black Dog Farm sells directly to consumers at farmers’ markets and several retailers, wholesale to restaurants, and through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription program.
To meet the demand for local chicken, Black Dog Farm owners Kira Jarosz and Tim Anthony built their own processing facility that allows them to butcher up to 20,000 of their own birds a year.
With funding from the CARES Act administered through the Montana Department of Agriculture’s Montana Meat Processing Infrastructure grant, they are now able to process all their birds on site for local sale.
Lack of market competition in the meatpacking industry has driven the percentage that ranchers receive for every consumer dollar spent on beef in the grocery store down to 40.5 cents, according to federal data.
Four conglomerates control nearly all of the market for meat products across the United States: Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and National Beef Packing. The meat processing industry has experienced significant consolidation over the last 50 years as these large conglomerates absorbed more and more small processors. In 1977, the largest four beef packing firms controlled approximately 25 percent of the market. Today, it’s around 82 percent.
While Montanans have enjoyed relatively low food prices, the consolidation of production has led to less food processing capacity in Montana; more reliance on processing outside of the state and distribution infrastructure; and a smaller portion of retail spending on food going back to the farmer or rancher.
In response, a growing number of producers in Montana are distributing their own meat. “We’ve got more local or regional processing happening so that it’s easier to get the meat into people’s hands nearby,” said Robin Kelson, the executive director of Alternative Energy Resource Organization, a nonprofit that works on sustainability and strengthening food systems in Montana. “It keeps money local, and it keeps jobs local.”
