Land Stewardship Project

Land Stewardship Project
  • About Us
    • Our Mission
    • Long Range Plan
    • Staff Directory
    • Board of Directors
      • LSP Board Committees
    • LSP Steering Committees & Working Groups
    • Contact Us
    • Past LSP Projects
    • Employment & Volunteer Opportunities
    • LSP Publications
    • Financial Statements
  • The Latest
    • Community Care
    • Songs for the Soil
    • CSA Farm Directory
    • Upcoming Events
    • News
      • News Releases
      • Media Contacts
      • LSP in the News
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Land Stewardship Letter
    • LIVE-WIRE Sign-up
    • Myth Busters
    • Fact Sheets
    • Farm Crisis Resources
  • For Farmers & Landowners
    • Farmland Clearinghouse
    • New Farmers
      • Farm Beginnings Class
      • Journeyperson Course
      • Farm Dreams
      • Accessing Farmland
      • Farmland Clearinghouse
      • Beginning/Retiring Farmer Tax Credit
      • Beginning Farmer Profiles
    • Retiring Farmers & Landowners
      • Farmland Clearinghouse
      • Farm Transition Planning Course
      • Conservation Leases
      • Beginning/Retiring Farmer Tax Credit
      • Land Transition Tools
      • Transition Stories
    • Soil Health
      • Cover Crops
      • Grazing
      • No-till
      • Microbiology
      • Soil Builders’ Network
      • Soil Builders’ E-Letters
      • Soil Health Steering Committee Members
    • Cropping Systems Calculator
    • Conservation Leases
  • Creating Change
    • Community-Based Food Systems
    • Policy Campaigns
      • Soil Health & Climate Change
      • Healthcare
      • Factory Farms
        • Anti-Competitiveness & Price Gouging
        • LSP Powerline Story Center
      • Federal Policy
        • A Farm Bill For Us
      • State Policy
        • MN Farm, Food & Climate Funding
      • Developing Leadership
    • Justice & Stewardship
    • Organizational Stewardship
    • Building People Power
  • Get Involved
    • Take Action!
    • Upcoming Events
    • Land Stewardship Action Fund
    • Connect with LSP
      • Stay Connected
      • Join, Donate, or Renew Today!
      • Shop
      • Employment & Volunteer Opportunities
      • Legacy Giving
    • Network with LSP Members
      • Farmland Clearinghouse
      • Soil Health
    • Farmland Clearinghouse
  • Join, Donate, or Renew Today!
  • Stay Connected
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
Search
More...

Community-Based Meat Processing as a Public Good

By LeeAnn & Jim VanDerPol
May 15, 2020

Share

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • email

Many small and medium-size farms are trying to survive by selling meats directly to retail customers and restaurants. The idea shows promise as a way to revitalize an economy otherwise in the shadow of huge farming enterprises. We need slaughterhouses; several good, new up-to-date buildings should be placed throughout the state to serve the growing number of farm meat-marketing businesses. These should be incubators of new business, attracting people who wish to operate meat processing businesses and equipping them with the knowledge and skills to build new businesses.

These incubators must feature handling along the humane lines suggested by Temple Grandin, the livestock whisperer. This will keep the adrenaline down in the animals, make the work easier, and win the approval of many customers who tend to be easily conflicted by the idea of animal slaughter. They must be of a size and quality to compare favorably with big meat. They must be, as much as possible, pleasant places to work and safe workplaces above all else. Pay must be adequate. The several that slaughter hogs should be capable of handling perhaps 500 to 1,000-head per week.

Lines should be discouraged in favor of teamwork. Line speeds, if lines are used, must be under strict state control. They should feature some in- house further processing, but they need to have slaughter capacity in excess of their processing — processing can proceed separately from slaughter and it is another worthwhile human activity we should encourage, scattered about in rural Minnesota.

Care must be taken to supplement, not replace, current private capacity. But our small processing capacity is getting old and shutting down. State officials could visit the facilities operated by the Lorentz brothers in Cannon Falls to see a good example of what could happen. These state-owned abattoirs could be built with bonding funds. It is badly needed economic development. This is not cheap processing. It is good processing. The time is right.

The state should build and retain ownership of these abattoirs. The meat processor associations can run apprentice programs in them that should encourage those who desire to and are able to operate processing to come forward. The facilities could be leased to operators. There should be a close working relationship with meat science at the University of Minnesota and the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI). The state’s retaining of ownership could guarantee that certain standards of humane slaughter and good work conditions are maintained as a minimum.

This would:

• enable badly needed access to quality processing for farmer-marketers;

• serve as an incubator and boost for people wanting to enter the processing field;

• build business-based prosperity in central and western Minnesota;

• allow for a much wider variety of farms, increasing numbers of viable farms, especially small farms;

• encourage farms that want to market directly or through relationships to people in the rural and urban areas;

• increase urban understanding of rural issues, and rural understanding of urban issues by highlighting the communication skills that go with closely held marketing businesses;

• diversify agriculture and farming, potentially increasing the possibility of better care of the Earth;

• encourage development of small processing businesses, holding out the possibility of “family heirloom” sausage recipes that people would drive out from the Twin Cities to buy;

• stabilize and support rural schools;

• stabilize and support main street businesses.

Currently, we have a food supply controlled by giant companies that are increasingly crippled by the pandemic. We must not reconcile ourselves to one meat plant or one cannery or one fresh vegetable warehouse system controlling as much as 5 percent of the product flow, which is the situation we have with the shutdown of Smithfield’s pork plant in Sioux Falls. It is dangerous. We really don’t yet know how dangerous.

The best way to come out in a different place is to make a different first step, a step for people, communities, and hogs. Rural Minnesota needs it. Individual farmers and others have already done the difficult work of developing the ideas of direct marketing, consumer connection to farmers, and creating relationships in business. The idea is growing. The time is now for the state to throw its shoulder to the wheel. We urge action.

LeeAnn and Jim VanDerPol, along with their family, own and operate Pastures A Plenty Farm in Kerkhoven in western Minnesota. The farm raises hogs and other livestock using regenerative methods and markets direct to consumers. This blog is based on a letter the VanDerPols recently sent to Minnesota Commissioner of Agriculture Thom Petersen, state Senator Andrew Lang, and state Representative Tim Miller.

Category: Blog

NULL

Montevideo

111 North First Street
Montevideo, MN 56265

(320) 269-2105

Lewiston

180 E. Main Street
Lewiston, MN 55952

(507) 523-3366

Minneapolis

821 E. 35th Street #200
Minneapolis, MN 55407

(612) 722-6377

  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Land Stewardship Project. All rights reserved.

https://landstewardshipproject.org/community-based-meat-processing-as-a-public-good