Want to Beef Up Your Local Chops? Try Meat-Sharing
Published November 21, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Does the locally raised, grass-fed meat you find at the farmers market trump your budget? The cost of sustainable meat is high, which is good since it means we might view it as a little more precious and occasional than many Americans do. But is there some way to directly support local farmers and get meat a little cheaper?
Why not try meat-sharing? The concept isn't new — it's basically a community-supported agriculture program for meat — but its popularity is picking up steam as interest in local food soars. The Oakland Local introduces readers to the Bay Area Meat CSA, which advertises itself with the straightforward tagline "buy good, healthy meat directly from local ranchers."
Mark Markovich, a satisfied customer who had bought 70 pounds of meat with some friends from Morris Grassfed Beef, ticked off a list of benefits: keeping money local, helping ranchers support themselves, reducing your carbon footprint. "You’re helping support the entire ecosystem," he told Oakland Local. "People talk about eating within a 100-mile radius of their homes. We can do that here. From field to fork, I know exactly what is going on with the food I’m eating.”
The Website Local Harvest lists CSAs by zip code, including many that provide meat.
Photo courtesy of tvol via flickr
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Comments (4)
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Author
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Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations. Her articles, essays, and stories have been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, books, and Websites.
Interesting to see this information...
I grew up on a family farm. With relatives living nearby on farms too. And we raised our own beef. In the schools, there are Vocational Agriculture programs, and Future Farmers of America Clubs. We have a small county fair where you'd think you were living Charlotte's Web. My brothers "raised beef" and entered them in the fair, etc....
We knew what the beef we raised ate. We knew what the animal looked like. We generally didn't "name" them... sometimes they had features that lended itself to being at least nicknamed!
So, an article like this is not news to people like me in the rural agricultural areas of the USA. People who live here already know to get on board for a "quarter" of beef someone nearby has raised....You just ask around... we also have local butchers who can tell you who locally sold him some of their beef for him to use in his hamburger he's got there behind the glass...because it's usually a mixture. Unless that's been regulated away since mad cow.
but these small town butcher guys arent making much money, and they work hard all day cutting and sawing apart animals. It is messy...
And so his kind are going by the wayside.
And if I drive 9 miles in the other direction, and ask the "family" owned butcher shop in a local community "farmers" market, where his beef comes from, he'd say "Argentina." He charges only pennies more per pound for it than the cheap mystery meat at the grocery store... and it's a much better product, mostly because it's higher in fat, i.e. tender.
Plus, we dont' have to look at the penned up herds that go on for a cool mile, or the mountains of B.S. they produce, or the vast stretches of Amazon rain-forest that is a decimated and lifeless death-scape headed for total desertification in mere years...
Also,... Most people, when given free range grass fed organic beef would say it was not tender.
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And the market decides my friends
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Even out here in farming country, YOU GOTTA ASK, and you have to expect to give up some of what you call "quality"
Which is BAD for you anyway!
Tougher meat is higher in protein per pound. It isn't QUITE as unhealthy.
Personally, to avoid all the scariness in food today, I am lacto ovo vegetarian, and I can get local organic cheeses, hormone free local milk and local small farm raised chicken eggs. It's a good location for local lacto ovo delights. :) I don't miss the meat and it wasn't a sacrificice or anything... once I changed my mentality about it...
You are what you eat... but you're also what you think. I think. :)
Posted by Laurie Walker on 11/21/2009 @ 07:02AM PT
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"Also,... Most people, when given free range grass fed organic beef would say it was not tender."
Well I suppose this is subjective, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Good grass fed is just as tender, generally somewhat leaner, and much more flavorful (whether you like that flavor or not is a matter of personal preference, but most people I know prefer it).
I've been doing a lot of reading on meat tenderness and how to get it when raising cattle, and the primary factors seem to be 1) genetics of the animal and 2) how the carcass is handled during/after slaughter.
Posted by Kristen Ridley on 11/21/2009 @ 12:39PM PT
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Pre-preparation and cooking methods can turn tough meat tender. In a conversation I had with a cooking-school grad his line was: "Yeah, any cheap cut of meat can be tender if you cook the hell out of it." (He likes his steaks bloody in the center.) I said: "Fine. Make it well-done and edible and cheap."
Posted by j k on 11/23/2009 @ 07:58AM PT
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The more general term for this practice is still probably "cow-sharing." If you're going to purchase an entire steer (as I'm planning to do in the near future through: www.arlingtonsnaturalmeats.com ), you either need a really, really big freezer or a handful of committed friends to go in on the purchase with you.
Great model though, and one I'd urge more people to investigate.
Posted by Greg Plotkin on 11/23/2009 @ 09:12AM PT
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