I live in a beautiful place. The winding country roads between my house and the “big” grocery store take me past cattle and sheep grazing on hillsides, under oak trees, and next to little country homes, old falling-down barns, and fences made of 100-year-old wooden posts. It’s picturesque. It’s where old-timers drive 35 mph and retired city-dwellers get away from it all.

Again and again, when we reminisce on the beauty of our surroundings, we mention those lazily grazing cows. It’s super-market-line conversation fodder. It’s what we chat about at the dentist.

But it’s a sham.

We go to the grocery stores and buy corn-fed beef from Kansas. We eat out at our favorite restaurants and enjoy a steak from some animal raised in Minnesota, or Montana, or Texas. A hamburger might even include beef from two different states, but neither of them are likely to be California, that is unless they come from Harris Ranch, the stench we pass on 1-5 on the way to Disneyland. Finally, we go to the local Butcher Shop – renowned for it’s marinades and specialty meat. But even here there is no sign of the lazy grazers or their progeny. There are Foster Farms chickens, feedlot beef, and pork from a factory farm, all fancied up with homemade sauces and spices, creating flavors that mean “special occasion” to our mouths before we graduate junior high.

Even many of the very ranchers that raise the animals we all admire are eating Costco steaks and Safeway pork chops.

So what happens to the cows of our idle chats? Why don’t they end up on our dinner plates? One of two scenarios.

Scenario 1, by far the most common (we’re talking 98%), is that they are sold at auction, to feedlots, at age one. The local ranchers keep a herd of cows and a bull or two. Each year they calve, and the calves are raised with their mothers, eating gorgeous green grass or locally-grown hay, for a year. At that time the calves are loaded into a trailer, driven 10-100 miles to an auction yard, and sold to the highest feedlot bidder. Bonus dollars if your calves all look the same. Then the process starts again, and momma cow continues to lazily graze the hillsides for all the little cars to admire while last-year’s babe gets bulked up on corn and pumped with antibiotics because it’s standing, sleeping, and eating in it’s own manure.

Scenario 2, for the 2% or less in our area who dare to try it, is that the calves are raised until age two, then sold directly to customers. This scenario requires a lot more work on the part of the rancher, partly because working with two-year-old animals requires stronger fences, bigger chutes, and more skill than the little one-year olds. But the main challenge in selling meat to neighbors, friends, and the community is that in order to sell directly to customers he/she has to either sell the animal live (are you capable of buying an entire cow?), or work within the USDA systems, finding USDA certified slaughterhouses and cut-and-wrap facilities to process the meat. So instead of loading the calves into a trailer and driving them 10-100 miles, then saying a sweet goodbye and heading to Burger King in time for lunch, the rancher now has to do the following:

load calves into trailer – drive at least 150 miles to the slaughterhouse – pay slaughterhouse and pay slaughterhouse to transport to cut-and-wrap facility or, gosh forbid, drive all the way back to slaughterhouse yourself to transport meat – drop off at cut-and-wrap facility – provide facility with cutting instructions (what’s the difference between flanken and English short ribs, again?) – pick up meat from cut-and-wrap facility and transport to cold storage facility – unload meat (thousands of pounds of it) into cold storage – let customers know their meat is ready and/or sort meat to take to farmers markets – keep track of meat inventory, prices, and sales – transport meat to customers – collect money….lather, rinse, repeat…every week or month or year…for the rest of time…

You can see why it’s hard to convince a rancher that they ought to switch to providing beef/lamb/goats/pork for their own community. You can also see why a struggling family farm might consider switching back to the easy way out.

Besides the obvious personal affects the system has on the rancher and the consumer, there are deeper economic consequences as well. Only fifty years ago every rural town, or at least every other rural town, had a butcher shop. Some had two or five. Most had slaughterhouses to go along with them. Now they are few and far between, and one carrying local products is even rarer. Every time we drive away from our communities with a load of cattle, whether they are headed to the feedlot auction or the USDA slaughterhouse, we are driving our dollars right out of our neighbors’ pockets. Bringing the slaughterhouses and butcher shops back to our communities will create jobs, keep money local, and fix a very inefficient system (need I mention the thousands and thousands of dollars our beef operation spent on fuel last year?).

And so for the past three months, and for five more until the clock runs out, I am working on a grant to begin the process of addressing this problem in California. We’ve talked about policy changes. We’ve talked about workarounds. In the end, we just need more slaughterhouses and cut-and-wrap facilities. There are less than five major players in the slaughterhouse world of Northern California. There are also less than five major players in the cut-and-wrap world of Northern California. Northern California is a big place with a lot of ranchers, many of which are beginning to turn to direct marketing because something deeper in their psyche than practicality is telling them to (practicality would never tell you to do this). The numbers don’t add up and ranchers I know are beginning to be turned away, with nowhere to go to get their meat turned from animal into dinner for your plate.

Today an article was published about the project I’m working on. It’s a beautiful title, and I give kudos to the writer: Where’s the Beef? How an Old Business Can Create New Jobs. Because we are in an old business. One of the oldest. We’re in the business of getting food to people, bonus points if it’s quality, local food. We are in a business that existed here, there, and everywhere fifty years ago. So our goal is really just to go back to an old time, to an old business, and make it work again. The problem, the question, the ever-lasting dilemma, is how?

If you’d like to contact me regarding this project, I can be reached at livestockcarina@gmail.com