Processor values grassfed demand

Nordik Meats finds success serving a variety of alternative meat producers

By Joel McNair

Viroqua, Wisconsin — “If there was no such thing as grassfed beef,” says Joel Morrison, “We wouldn’t be as successful as we are.”

Lots of grass farmers might make such a statement, but Joel is not one of them. Instead he is the general manager for Nordik Meats, an unusual meat processor with an uncommon ownership structure that produces some interesting end products in addition to the usual sides, quarters, and retail cuts.

Beef tallow, pork lard, bone broth — these and other products often associated with micro-processing ventures are a growing part of Nordik Meats, a USDA-inspected plant with 25 employees serving a handful of grassfed/alternative meat marketing organizations in addition to much smaller producers having processing done for their own consumption and direct-market sales.

Certainly the traditional cuts account for the bulk of Nordik’s business. Grassfed beef and lamb, plus pastured pigs, are by no means everything the plant does: Joel says that grassfed accounts for roughly half of the total volume here.

But Joel sees grassfed meats and the associated added-value products as important to Nordik’s future as “cornerstone” customers such as 99 Counties (Graze January 2023) and Wisconsin Meadows innovate and grow, and smaller, often direct-to-market ventures tap rising interest in grass-finished, organic, and local meats.

May 3, 2022May 5, 2022

Regenerative ag aims to go mainstream

By Joel McNair

Organic and grassfed production practices have done great things for thousands of farmers and ranchers. Millions of consumers have benefited, too.

But looking at this from a broader perspective — and I think most organic and grassfed people do look at things this way — there’s a big problem here:

Very few acres are being farmed and ranched as organic and/or grassfed.

The things we want to achieve in terms of bettering people and the planet aren’t getting done. Indeed, by most reports the overall picture here is getting darker by the day.

October 1, 2019July 12, 2022

Regenerating soils by grazing cattle and pigs

By John Arbuckle
Grazing multiple species provides many benefits, not the least of which is enterprise stacking that allows each acre to create more than one saleable product in the same growing season.

Our topic here is how to make multi-species grazing regenerative in the biological sense. We custom graze replacement heifers in front of our pigs, with 37 heifers and slightly more than 100 finisher pigs moving in a leader-follow pattern.

May 1, 2019July 26, 2020

How we regenerate soils with pigs

By John and Holly Arbuckle
We consistently hear how pigs can’t be regenerative. We would edit that to say this: While pigs don’t fit into the regenerative equation as smoothly as ruminants, we can look for strategies to improve land, even with pigs.

When it comes to regenerative grazing, it is useful to look at how pigs compare and contrast to beef cows. Let’s contrast first:
• If you want pigs to grow at a reasonable rate, you’ll have to give them something other than just grass.
• If you want them to create positive animal impact on your cropland or pasture, you have to move more than just the fence.

This second topic is what we are talking about in this article.

March 1, 2019July 22, 2021

Rebuilding soils and community

Reverence Farms taking ‘local’ to another level

By Joel McNair

Saxapahaw, North Carolina — Quite frankly, what is taking place here at Reverence Farms is almost too much to describe.

There’s the 45-cow dairy herd with its rapidly growing raw milk sales program, plus the possibility of a further-processing venture at some point in the future. There’s the Jersey linebreeding program and bull/semen sales based on genetics that do well on no-grain rations and mediocre forages, along with a variety of milk qualities ranging from ultra-high solids to A2A2 genetics.

April 1, 2017April 18, 2020

Stacking enterprises in the Deep South

Nature’s Gourmet Farm is bringing good food to southern Mississippi

Petal, Mississippi — Ben and Beth Simmons have a lot going for them in terms of producing grassfed products and marketing to the public.

Pasture can grow here virtually year-round, rainfall is plentiful on an annual basis, and forage tonnage can be impressive. Ben can get many of his moderate-framed Red Angus steers to around 1,000 lbs. live weight, with hanging carcasses at 600 lbs., in no more than 16 months on mother’s milk and grazed forages. Continue reading “Stacking enterprises in the Deep South”