How Might The Beef Industry Diversify In The U.S.?

While the price of beef at the grocery store has gone up, ranchers aren’t necessarily seeing a cut of those profits. Four major companies control about 85% of the meatpacking industry in the U.S. 

Most ranchers raise cows on their land for less than a year. Then, they’re sold into the feedlot system where they’re fed grain to fatten them up for slaughter. 

Once the cow leaves the ranch, the rancher has no control over how that cow spends the rest of its life, where its meat ends up being sold — or for how much. 

When Cory Carman took over her family ranch in northeastern Oregon, she knew she wanted to do things differently.

Carman said she was determined to cut out the middleman and have her cows spend their whole lives in her care, eating only grass. But it took time for her to build her business.

“So it’s like all things, right, that it starts out really, really hard,” Carman said.  

She started by taking her cows to a local butcher and selling the meat in shares to people in her community. Folks would buy a quarter of a cow or a half of a cow and store it in their chest freezers to eat throughout the year, instead of going to the grocery store and buying cuts of meat like most of us do.

But Carman wanted to go bigger. So, she set her sights on breaking into the fancy urban restaurant world. 

“And we would walk in just terrified to these high-end Portland chefs and fancy restaurants that we could never afford to eat in,” Carman said. “And, you know, we’d hand them our little paper-wrapped steak, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we don’t really like grass-fed, but I’ll give it a try.’” 

It was a constant hustle, Carman said: raising the beef, figuring out the supply chain — the shipping, processing, marketing. All of it on top of raising three kids. And this was long before COVID-19. 

But she kept at it. Carman Beef is now sold in restaurants from Sacramento to Seattle, and by the New Seasons grocery chain. Carman said her company brings in $7 million in gross revenue and buys cows from seven different ranches in the Northwest. All the ranchers agreed to feed their cows only grass, no hormones, and to use minimal chemicals on their land.