I wanted to take a little time to chat about beef prices. We all know good quality food is not cheap, nor should it be for fair prices for farmers and for a sustainable local economy. I do however also understand that each of us is doing our best to feed our family the best we can with
the money we have. There has been some movement in the beef markets in the last few years and I wanted to shed some light on it to give you a better idea of why we set our prices the way we do and what goes into bringing you the service you’ve come to expect from Vibrant Farms. I started out selling beef straight from my Dad’s farm. I then realized that we were small, and wanted to stay small (for quality purposes) but still needed to get good beef to people. I have a really unique blessing that
I was brought up around a bunch of farmers who were all very much ahead of their time when I was quite small. All of the farmers we buy from now are farmers my parents got together with socially, I played with their kids and we had community gardens together. They were figuring out the pasture based farming thing back in the 80’s, they were selling to the main stream market even though they were committed to doing things this “new and crazy way” (or at least it was back then). So in order to
give access to great quality beef, keep farms small, and make it as accessible as possible to consumers (how’s that for a triple bottom line!!) I decided this model was the best.
First of all we wanted to let you know all of our prices will be going up in 2015. We will honour orders made before the 31st of December 2014 at current prices.
The are a few factors that contribute
to our pricing change:
- Cost of beef on the open market is quite high
- Keeping up with increasing costs (land, transport, etc.)
Over the last few years a few things have happened. I mentioned to a few of you after the 2012 drought that prices were bound to go up (perhaps you may have forgotten
by now). Many farmers sold off their herd in an effort to not lose a lot of money trying to keep their herds well when there was simply very little grass and very little water. That massive sell off drove the prices down temporarily and now 2 years later when we should be having a proper round of animals ready for market there really isn’t any. The price has gone up significantly.
How this affects
you and us?
I aim to pay my farmers fairly. I don’t feel right about only going with the upswings and never going with the downswings. In general having to deal with a fluctuating market is what can cause a lot of stress for farmers. I aim to slowly increase the cost of beef over time, to take into account the fact that my father and other farmers could sell their best beef on the open market for a better price
at times, and at other times we can pay them a premium. I hope you can join us in paying farmer’s fairly and slowly raising prices over time. Avoiding the fluctuation and keeping our best meat at home. The other aspect of the cost of beef is the sheer cost to produce it. We have to take into account the cost of the land that the animal walks on to get all its grassy goodness. I often see farmers selling their meat for low prices, when I sit with them and talk about what it’s actually
costing them (not even including their time) to produce that animal they often don’t think about it. Farmer’s love what they do, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be paid for it.
Retail
The other aspect of running what is essentially a “cost-co” for grass fed meat is that I need to be
mindful of empowering anyone who buys the meat to resell that we aren’t essentially undercutting. I still firmly believe there should be a benefit to those who are willing to make the drive out to pick it up. So our “retail prices”, the prices that you would pay for any amount of beef that isn’t a bulk package of any sort (an intro, quarter or side) will need to reflect those of the retail environment (these people work tirelessly to make small amounts of food available to you when and where you
need it, this results in many more costs involved in doing so). So we will have a “suggested retail price” for our retails and resellers who are supporting you by making it available and Vibrant Farms by making the commitment of buying a large amount of meat. We will also have a small discount for those who choose to buy individual cuts from the farm.
What Vibrant
Farms does.
At Vibrant Farms we (Kathryn and I, farmers, butcher, and truckers) make sure all the butchering and communicating with the butcher is done for you, we do our best to make ordering simple and easy. We aim to provide an option for people who may want to save some money and still have top quality food. We do this through bulk purchasing and by having someone coordinate all the pick ups, coordinate with
the farmers, the truckers and the consumers. We offer smaller “bulk” packages so that you don’t have to buy the whole cow and you still get access to “bulk” pricing, all of this takes time and effort. We keep our costs low by not having a store front, and by keeping everything frozen. By coordinating this little chain of supply and having a sort of co-op of farmers we can effectively provide the best quality beef, while keeping the costs to the customer as low as possible.
We want to thank you for all your continued business over the years. We appreciate all the feedback and the positive encouragement. We always want to do better and be better. We always aim to keep the customer in the loop, to be totally transparent and essentially open our books to you. We hope we’ve explained a little bit about whats happening in the beef world if you have any further questions
please feel free to give us a shout.