Bringing Pastured Meat to Markets

Interest in local pastured meats was on the rise long before the tariff war, the carnivore diet and the pandemic. It's now set to accelerate, assuming the problems limiting growth can be solved.

It’s not about the process, it’s about the product.

The infighting between farmers from different factions of agriculture is heating up, specifically between the no-till camp and the certified organic value chain. On the surface, people appear to be debating the need for regenerative agriculture to have a definition, standardization, auditing and traceability.

‘Why not, right? I mean, greenwashing is a problem.’

Underneath the surface,

• The no-till crowd is organizing conventional agriculture interest groups into an unwinnable debate, because they haven’t cared long enough to realize that in fact, there can be no definition for regenerative agriculture. Commodity thinking cannot conceive of an approach to agriculture that is context-specific.

• People with a vested interest in certified organic farmland, brands, supply chain infrastructure and advocacy insist it’s the starting point for any regenerative seal. This message is an attempt to protect organic’s consumer market share.

Meanwhile, farms all over the world are getting scored under the Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) model, developed 5+ years ago, and marketing into premium value chains at scale. Thousands upon thousands more are being paid by General Mills, Pepsi, McCain and other global behemoths for practice changes.

This horse is out of the gate, folks. Sorry to say to those who feel otherwise, but farmers have not been waiting around for the big money behind industrial agriculture to come up with a definition for the improvements they are making.

‘Defining regenerative’, or natural or soil health or sustainability for that matter, is pointless. Worse yet, it distracts the power elite in industrial agriculture from addressing its real issues: lost natural capital and struggling rural farm communities.

What Really Matters

There are 2 common threads that unite people passionate about regenerative agriculture:

1. A reverence for the natural world; and

2. Devotion to community.

Most people who ‘get’ regenerative agriculture intuitively, are also passionate about good food. They understand the taste, texture, safety, impact and nutritional benefits of consuming pasture-raised meat, eggs, and dairy, and the grains and produce that are grown on properly-grazed fields afterwards.

Therein lie the first few stepping stones to monetizing and marketing regenerative agriculture. Let’s explore how producing and processing locally-raised pastured meats can work.