Economics & Sustainability

Having gotten my start in the food industry in California’s central coast, I was dismayed to read this week that the Bear and Star Restaurant was closing. What does that have to do with farmers markets and restaurants here in the mid-Atlantic, you may be asking yourself. The answer is plenty.A few weeks ago, Dishing the Dirt covered the impacts climate change is having on our planet. There are plenty of those who choose to bury their collective heads in the sand with excuses despite being continually proven the opposite by science. Extreme changes in temperatures, hydrologic cycles, shifting climatic zones, spreading hypoxic areas along the coast resulting in massive wildlife die-offs—all of this and more has a direct and significant impact on the food system, especially what the consumer will have to pay for their products.The closing of an experimental ranch-to-table restaurant backed by one of the most affluent families of the food and wine industry was simply unsustainable after only three years.  Chef John Cox, an experienced restauranteur in his own right before taking on this project, estimated for the venture to be truly sustainable, a burger should have carried a $30 price tag instead going for $17. Assuming it’s an 8-ounce burger, that’s still $34 per pound. But I delved a little deeper into the prices on their menu—meatloaf for $25, the New York (10 oz.) $68, filet (7 oz.) $55 and ribeye (20 oz.) $110.Considering that the fabled Wagyu beeves being raised are harvested at approximately 1,500 pounds, that’s going to offer about 900-pound carcass. Doing the math on carcass yield based on numbers from the University of Tennessee as well as my own experience, this is how the numbers broke down according to the prices on the menu.Burgers 600 lb. @$34 lb. = $20,400Ribeyes 50 lb. @$88 lb. = $4,400Filets 15 lb. @125 lb. = $1,875New Yorks 42 lbs. @$108.80 lb. = $4569.60Gross sales from 1 beef carcass = $31,244.60 which translates into per pound $20.83 live or $34.72 hot carcass on the rail.For comparison, premium grass-finished, Certified Organic, Certified Grass-fed and Animal Welfare Approved beef carcasses top out at $3.25 lb. on the rail for the farmers in our mid-Atlantic food shed. Does that mean a hundred-dollar locally raised steak at a celebrity restaurant isn’t worth it? Not at all, if all the factors including wages, rents, marketing and taxes are considered. Furthermore, out of all the restaurants serving meat, very few purchase whole animals to break down in their own establishments. These are the smartest of all restaurateurs. {Hint: eat there}The key word I want to zero in on is sustainable. Too many times I’ve come across farmers buying into the latest agricultural scheme that will give them an edge in an already tight market—alpacas, emus, yaks, and yes—wagyu beef, all in hopes of selling a high-dollar product that will not only cover the expenses of production but bring home a profit, too. {Full Disclosure: I have owned a yak} Even when farmers and ranchers manage to raise the coveted Japanese beef in America, access to slaughterhouses and butchers with the ability to knowledgeably process the meat are few and far between.Here is the reality about raising livestock—everything cannot be the best. In a group of animals there are a small percentage of premium animals, (hopefully) a small percentage of scrappy stragglers and everyone in between which comprises the majority. Industrially raised meat has been bred and fed for uniformity so much that many packers, especially with pigs, demand specific weights and dimensions for automated processing. The same holds true for many fruits and vegetables—same size, same color, no blemishes. To have a truly sustainable operation, producers must be able to effectively market all the products from their farms. That could mean making sausage or sauces, but to depend on only selling premium products isn’t going to have a good return in the long run.This subject has been brewing for a blog since an aggressive customer badgered me about my leg of lamb after complaining he couldn’t get Icelandic Leg of Lamb from Whole Foods.“I only feed my friends the very best,” he said while dropping names like Jamón ibérico and Wagyu. I’m totally cool with people inquiring about my farming practices, but don’t compare me or any of my fellow vendors at the farmers market to professionally branded products, especially ones produced overseas. He further went on to question my prices as he thought they should be less than the grocers’. I should have sent him to Bear and Star for a steak.Here’s my point: when does it become unsustainable to raise and sell food in a geographical area? Was the demise of Bear and Star due to ranching expensive, boutique cattle in a drought-stricken, fire-prone environment or were there not enough customers willing to plunk down a hundred bucks for a steak in the little 1,300-person town dependent upon tourism?Recently, I participated on a farmer panel at the screening of The Biggest Little Farm, a documentary about Apricot Lane Farm, a regenerative endeavor begun in the same county were I farmed out west for many years just south of Bear and Star’s location. Water is a limiting factor, fire is a very real threat; add in predators, pests and labor. It took a lot of investment and hard work to get the farm operating in accordance with nature, but sustainable? I wonder how my customers would feel about $15 for a dozen chicken eggs.Just like Apricot Lane Farm, I too, had to pick up plenty of livestock sacrificed to the predator gods before putting livestock guardian dogs into the equation. So have my fellow Central Farm Market vendors. We rotate our pastures, use nonGMO feeds, we try to keep up with customer demands in regard to our agricultural practices. (I’m drawing the line at slow-growing chickens, though) We may not be household names, but we’re taking on mother nature day in and day out, showing up to market each week to provide our communities access to locally produced food that’s affordable. That is economic sustainability.