Teamwork on the Range
Bay Area Ranchers Co-op creates solutions together
Kevin Maloney’s rugged individualism is not unusual in the ranching world. Maloney, a fifth-generation rancher who raises beef, lamb, pork, chicken and eggs at his family’s Fallon Hills Ranch in Tomales, describes himself as someone who has always kept his head down, working hard and running his business.
“I’ve done my own thing,” he says. “I’m just not a big group person.”
How then, did Maloney find himself not only joining the board of the Bay Area Ranchers Co-operative (BAR-C), a recently formed meat processing co-op based in West Marin, but becoming president of the board?
Maloney’s new-found leadership role has everything to do with the fact that he, like many small-scale Bay Area ranchers and farmers, has had to drive his livestock hundreds of miles to reach one of the few USDA-approved slaughterhouses in the state. In Maloney’s case, he drives 500 miles on an 11- to 12-hour loop to a slaughtering facility in Eureka.
“It’s a very long day,” he says. “I like the people in Eureka, but I do not like the drive.”
Maloney’s personal story, that of a rancher who joined forces with other ranchers in his region to craft a solution to a growing and urgent problem—lack of access to meat processing for small to midsize ranchers and farmers—sits in the context of a much larger story. The bigger picture is that for 50-plus years the meat processing industry has been consolidating, a trend that leaves smaller producers at a disadvantage and undercuts efforts to establish a viable local, sustainable and humane food system.
“The root of what brought ranchers to this place goes back to the steady, relentless consolidation in the meat packing and processing industry, which has led to fewer and fewer slaughter plants,” says Vince Trotter, sustainable ag coordinator for the UC Co-operative Extension of Marin. Trotter works with the local North Bay agricultural community to find solutions that lead to environmental and economic sustainability. He has had a front row seat, watching as small-scale local ranches bump up against large-scale capitalist forces.
“Increasingly, processing plants are owned by companies that are completely vertically integrated,” says Trotter. “These large-scale companies raise the animals, do the processing and then they sell to their own labels.” In most cases, these companies make their facilities accessible only to producers who are working within the umbrella brand, so not only has the number of plants shrunk, but those that remain are not necessarily accessible to what are called “private label,” the small to midsize direct-to-consumer producers.
That’s the bad news. However, Trotter points out, there is some good news in the form of another agricultural trend: “Concurrent with consolidation, there has been a positive trend. This trend is an interest in locally produced products—vegetables and meat—and an encouragement by organizations that support agricultural producers to direct-market their products to the community, to shift their business models to sell products under their own name direct to consumers.”
In the Bay Area, where health-conscious and environmentally conscientious consumers are looking for local organic, sustainable and humanely raised food, this direct-marketing of “value added” products works.
This second trend has led to stability and success for local ranchers and farmers over the past two decades, but the meat sector of local agriculture, dependent upon processing plants to butcher, faces a unique challenge that has caused the two trend lines to collide in recent years.
“In order for someone to sell their own meat directly to consumers, it has to be slaughtered and cut and wrapped under USDA inspection,” says Trotter. “So, we have ranchers lining up to run their own labels and sell their own products, but we have processors increasingly backing away. This is true here in the North Bay, [elsewhere] in California, and all over the country.”
According to USDA data, four corporations slaughter 80% of the cattle in the United States today, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the dysfunction of the system. Over the past year and a half, Covid outbreaks struck plants nationwide, sickening large numbers of employees. A March 2021 USDA report counted 53,000 workers at 569 meatpacking plants in the United States who had tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least 277 had died as of February 2021. Beyond the tragic human toll, the pandemic completely shut down some facilities and slowed production in others, creating meat shortages and highlighting the vulnerability of the industry— and our nation’s food supply. Meat producers of all sizes have turned to a limited number of local processors and waitlists have burgeoned, aggravating an already-problematic situation for local ranchers and farmers. The established system both favors big ag and is exceptionally vulnerable.
This brings us back to Kevin Maloney and BAR-C. Approximately 80 ranchers from the greater Bay Area foodshed first came together in January 2020 to address the pressing issue they were all facing; by late spring of that year a group of 16 of those (referred to as the “Founding Members” of BAR-C) had put together a plan to purchase and operate a mobile slaughter unit (MSU). By early summer, the group had determined that the co-operative model was the best option to run the business, and had appointed a nine-person board of directors.
On July 28, 2020, after six months of meetings, research and market analysis, the Bay Area Ranchers Co-operative was legally formed and the group filed papers with the State of California to become the only California co-operative agricultural enterprise currently in the meat processing realm.
According to the California Center for Co-operative Development, agricultural co-operatives are organized to help farmers gain market power by joining together to market their crops (or, in the case of BAR-C, their services), to increase bargaining power by achieving economies of scale, to process their commodity to add value, and/or to purchase supplies and services. Any profits are distributed equally to members of the co-operative.
“What I love about the co-op model is that the business is in the hands of the ranchers,” says Maloney. “We are not beholden to any individual who can dictate who they will do business with or can take the ball and go home.”
After BAR-C’s state paperwork was taken care of, the team’s fundraising phase began. To raise the funds needed to purchase and install the MSU, BAR-C offered two options to potential investors: Class B Preferred Stock for investments of $50,000 or more, and a Class C Crowd-Funded Stock for investments of $500—$49,999. By the following spring, BAR-C had raised enough money to purchase both an MSU and an ideal property to house the unit in West Marin. All this, while the BAR-C team members were running their own individual businesses, amidst a pandemic.
“The board is a unique group,” says Maloney. “We’ve got people who are multigenerational ranchers and people who are first-gen ranchers. People who have run major companies to people who raise just a few animals. We have a good mix of individuals.”
Among that good mix is Kathy Webster of TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, a grass-fed cattle ranch established in 2006. Webster is TomKat’s food advocacy manager and is also in charge of their LeftCoast GrassFed Beef label. Although TomKat is based in the South Bay, Webster had established relationships with North Bay farmers and ranchers who faced the same seemingly intractable processing problem.
“I have been working on ‘bottleneck issues’—the issues around access to meat processing—for as long as we have been processing,” says Webster, whose career is highlighted by her community activism to strengthen the local food system. Webster, like others who have joined BAR-C, has experienced multiple rounds of whiplash over the past decade and a half.
For many years local producers took their livestock to a Petaluma facility called Rancho. In 2014, Rancho was shut down due to USDA violations and David Evans, proprietor of Marin Sun Farms based in Pt. Reyes, took over the facility. For a few years Bay Area ranchers were able to process their animals at Evans’ facility, but in early in 2020 Evans announced he would no longer be able to process animals outside of the Marin Sun Farms label, and regional livestock producers were out of luck again.
Over the past handful of years, Webster has had no choice but to transport TomKat cattle to a facility in Merced. She and other BAR-C members point out that the transportation miles counter their sustainability efforts, in addition to stressing animals, which is both inhumane and affects the quality of the meat as adrenaline due to duress is known to impact the flavor and texture of meat. When Webster was invited to meet with the group of North Bay ranchers to explore the idea of purchasing a mobile processing unit, she was eager to join.
“After that first meeting of 80, I became one of the 16 founding members and joined the mobile unit slaughterhouse committee. We were responsible for looking at different models. We spent months running numbers, looking at inputs, talking to people. We knew we wanted to be a multi-species processor, so we met with others [already successful at this.]”
It was at this stage that Keith Taylor, a UC Davis Extension professor and community economic development specialist consulted with the group. “I came in at a fun time, at the ideation stage, and I kind of gave a pep talk,” says Taylor, who grew up and was educated in the Midwest, where the co-operative model is more widely embraced. “Some people call me ‘Co-op Keith,’ believing I am biased that co-ops are always the solution. The truth is, in certain cases a co-op in a no-brainer.”
From Taylor’s perspective, this was one of those situations and there were a few factors that made him believe the co-operative model would be successful for the Bay Area ranchers.
“A core clique had developed in the process of establishing BAR-C. A few people left in the beginning, which I told them is healthy—they self-selected and got out of the way,” says Taylor. “The timing was also right, with the shuttering of processing facilities across the country due to the pandemic. And BAR-C is in a region that is one of the best places to sell value-added meat.”
While BAR-C is a for-profit entity, the ranchers hold collective control of the slaughter and processing operation, deciding as a group on board policy, hiring and operations. Taylor points to Organic Valley Dairy in Wisconsin as an example of a co-op that has been highly successful, and says he believes that BAR-C will pave the way for other California meat processing co-operatives.
“The region is sorely underdeveloped in terms of co-operative agriculture. Regional leaders talk a great talk, but don’t create the support systems for farmers and ranchers to establish co-operatives,” he says. “Silicon Valley likes the disruptive business model and all of that. So, when you bring up the idea of a co-op there’s always suspicion ... people wondering what it means.”
What BAR-C means for Duskie Estes, co-owner with her husband, John Stewart, of Black Pig Meat Co., is clear. “For me, this is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is an amazing moment in history—the creation of a co-op owned by ranchers, for ranchers,” says Estes, who sources meat for bacon and other pork-based specialty items from small local farms. “Our family will sell our meat fresh, something we couldn’t do before. Farmers and ranchers are no longer at the mercy of private enterprise. It is so exciting and I can’t tell you how proud I am.”
As co-founder of Zazu Kitchen + Farm, a popular Sonoma County restaurant for 19 years, and a James Beard Foundation— trained chef and food system advocate, Estes has strived to support the local, organic and humanely raised food system, but found that that became increasingly difficult to do as other local meat producers gave up.
“We always practiced ethical sourcing, buying direct from over 200 farmers and ranchers, and knowing that the local economy is strong if local agriculture is strong,” says Estes. “But over the last six months running Zazu, which closed in 2019, I noticed a rapid loss of local ranching due to lack of access to local processing—ranchers I had been working with for two decades were quitting. It was ridiculous. When we think of spring in Sonoma, we think of mustard blooms and baby lambs jumping around in the fields, and I couldn’t get local lamb or goat.”
Market validation by Webster and Estes and other members of the MUSC committee confirmed that not only would a local processing business have legs, but that an MSU presented a genuine economic opportunity. “We found that the need for local processing outweighed capacity by 200%,” says Estes. Specifically, they found that 10,000 head of livestock are processed annually in the region and that 60% of those animals come from fewer than 50 miles away. “We knew we’d definitely have the business if we could find funding.”
“And, of course, the greatest savings is environmental,” continued Estes. When BAR-C surveyed a group of 11 ranchers about their commute for processing, they calculated that in eight months those ranchers traveled enough miles transporting their animals to drive around the world. The local unit will save those ranchers alone 19.6 tons of CO2, a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Raising $1.2 million and signing up 38 ranchers, each committing an initial $3,000 to join the co-op, allowed the BAR-C team to move forward quickly. They got busy identifying the right mobile unit—which, despite its name, will stay in one location.
“A mobile unit is cost effective because it is prefab and an easier pathway to operation from the permitting standpoint,” says UC Extension’s Vince Trotter. “The property for the unit that BAR-C found is in Marin, because in 2017 Marin County had the foresight to amend the land use code allowing for mobile slaughterhouses [in specified areas]. Marin had seen challenges for ranchers and opened this pathway.”
After purchasing a Friesla-brand MSU, BAR-C identified an ideal farm property near Marshall to house it and, this July, a year after incorporating, the BAR-C members gathered on the property for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, snapping selfies in front of their new purchase.
By law, the USDA is required to provide a full-time inspector to examine the livestock prior, during and following slaughter, observing the welfare and health of animals, sanitation and safety practices.
With the MSU up and running, the BAR-C board and founding members are now working to raise additional funds— writing grant proposals and pitching to investors—in order to expand their services. “We are fundraising for the next phase,” says Maloney. “In the future, we hope to include poultry and a cut-and-wrap facility, and further processing capacity for sausages and smoked meat.” They have also applied for a USDA product grant to monetize the inedible byproduct called ‘drop’—the heart, liver ,tongue, hides—rather than having to pay for it to be hauled away.
“Many stars had to align for this group to do what they have done,” According to Trotter and Keith Taylor, BAR-C has already inspired ranchers in other regions of the country to explore the co-operative model for meat processing—ranchers from Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Ohio and beyond.
“It really is a tremendous feat,” says Trotter. “And through it all they maintained a principle: They were adamant that this was not for any one of them individually; this was for the ranching community and local agriculture writ large.”
