Beef cooperative - Part 2

The Adirondack Grazers Cooperative is a group of beef producers from small to mid-size family farms in New York who naturally raise and finish beef. The co-op was formed in June 2012, thanks to an initial SARE grant.

The goal of the cooperative was to build financially viable farms in New York State by selling grass fed beef to markets in New York City, and other major markets, in order to increase revenue back to the farms.

After a slow start in the summer of 2012, we started selling two beef per week by the fall of 2012 using Eagle Bridge Custom Meat in Eagle Bridge, NY as our processor. This eventually increased to four beef per week. Then in the fall of 2013 we secured Fresh Direct, an on line supermarket in New York City, as our customer. We started by selling 10 beef every other week, using NY Custom Meats in Bridgewater, NY as our processor, and increased that number to 10 beef per week by the end of 2014. The income allowed the cooperative to rent an office, hire a full time Operations Manager and part time bookkeeper and Membership Coordinator. Our Membership increased from 13 full Farm Members to 36 Farm Members by the end of 2014. We sold over a million dollars worth of beef in 2014.

Introduction:

New York State loses a farm every 3.5 days and 215,000 acres of farmland lies idle. We formed the Adirondack Grazers as a way to return a living wage to farmers and to help farmers who had sold their dairy herds to transition to grass fed beef. We felt that there was a growing market for local grass fed beef, raised without the use of antibiotics or growth hormones, and an entity was needed to help market and sell that beef to New York City, and other major markets, and to organize transportation and finances. We felt that the cooperative model allowed farmers to keep their farm identities and methods but gave them the support that they needed.

We have a 200-acre farm outside of Granville, NY (Emsig Farm) but we also live in New York City so I felt that I was in a position to find the markets for the Cooperative and to help in the formation of it. Our farm was managed by our neighbor, Duane Burch (Burchland Farm) but when he sold his dairy herd our fields fell into disrepair. We formed Rosie’s Beef together and started a small herd of grass fed beef, which helped to restore the pastures, but I could not find a viable market that would allow us to sell our beef at a profit. I felt that as a group of farmers we could supply a consistent, year round supply of beef to the right markets in New York City and get a better price.

We help a meeting to discuss this idea on November 4, 2011 hosted by Sandy Buxton and the Cornell Cooperative Extension, and 50 farms turned up. We realized that there was a real need for an entity to market and sell beef for small to mid size farms and to arrange the transportation and finances.

Over time, we have been greatly helped by the support of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Hudson Falls, and by Sandy Buxton in particular. We continued to hold all of our initial meetings there and Sandy, with legal assistance from Robert Hafner, helped us to formulate our Protocols, By Laws, Incorporation papers and budgets. Much of this was funded by an initial SARE grant.

We have continued to work with the Cornell Cooperative Extension to get the word out to farmers in their newsletter and regular e-mail bulletins, and in holding monthly meetings and workshops at the CCE offices. These meetings are open to members, potential members, as well as to anyone who has an interest in grass fed beef farming, meat and marketing. We have also expanded to work closely with the Oenida and Otsego County CCE officers, who support our new farm members in the Finger Lakes Region.

As a result of our work we have had requests from other CCE groups to speak on panels and we will continue to do that, as well as attending and participating in conferences, including UVM's 18th Annual Vermont Grazing & Livestock Conference; NOFA-NY Winter Conference 2015; CCE's Winter Green Up Grass Fed Grazing Conference and the NYS Beef Association Annual Winter Conference in January 2015.

With the support of the first SARE grant, we have been filming farmer’s portraits since the summer of 2012 and continued to film throughout 2013 and 2014. These portraits are posted on our web site for customers to see exactly where their beef came from and how it was raised.

I am also an Emmy nominated filmmaker and I teamed up with Lisa Jackson, who is also an Emmy award winning documentary maker, to produce these portraits and together we produced a feature length documentary, Grazers: A Cooperative Story, on the cooperative and its members. We received a NYSCA grant ($18,200) to complete the editing process and a grant from the Woodshouse Foundation for Outreach ($30,000).

The Adirondack Grazers have also been fortunate to receive grants and support from the Woodshouse Foundation ($25,000), the New York Farm Viability Institute ($75,000). Our accounts are managed by a bookkeeper that we hired in 2014 and by Farm Credit East, who extended a line of credit to the co-op ($50,000).