Local Meat Processing Seeks Stability
The best Steve Andal can figure it, his dad started the business in 1955. Back then when “everybody had a couple of cows on three acres,” butchering across Skagit County was simpler with fewer regulations. Andal worked alongside his father for a decade and then took over and ran Andal’s Custom Meats for 53 years before retiring. Now, his son, Jack, is in charge, but Andal is never far away with his voice of experience that knows how the industry has evolved.
This third-generation operation on the southern edge of Mount Vernon has always focused on quality. “If we didn’t have the quality,” Andal said, “we couldn’t compete.” No matter how much the industry has changed, that remains steadfast.
In that way, the story of Andal’s Custom Meats resembles all the other parts of Skagit agriculture: building strong businesses, adapting to changes, and serving local farmers and consumers.
“There are a million struggles to being a farmer,” said Erik Olson of Well Fed Farms in Bow. “One of the things that is helpful in operating a business is having ways to get the best price possible for the food you produce.”
For today’s local meat producers, this has not always been easy.
Options for butchering have often been limited around Skagit County. Stability has been hard to maintain.
Alan Mesman, a longtime La Conner farmer, recalls a time when “people were calling and making appointments the day the animal was born” for butchering up to two years in advance. Andal’s Meats is booked out a year in advance, said Andal. The demand for these services is high.
The reasons are a little complicated.
One reason is labor. There is a shortage of trained butchers and meatcutters, highly skilled jobs that take years of training and apprenticeship. “Back in the day when I learned,” said Andal, “there was a four-year apprenticeship.” The training is shorter now but still essential. When trained butchers are in front of an animal hanging, they can “see all the cuts,” said Mesman, “and it takes a long time to learn that.”
Besides labor, one of the constraints is restrictions on how meat can be sold.
Custom meat processing, like what Andal’s Custom Meats offers, is limited typically to personal consumption and cannot be sold to the public (although Andal’s does offer retail sales). This works well for a family that wants to butcher just one or a few animals for personal use.
According to Mesman, there are enough backyard, part-time farmers that want their animals butchered to keep several small local mobile butchers so busy they do not even need to advertise.
But for a farmer who wants to make meat a significant part of their farm’s income, custom butchering and processing is insufficient. For them to be able to sell directly to the public, restaurants, or grocery stores, they rely on USDA-certified facilities. These facilities tend to serve larger livestock operations. Facilities in or near Skagit have been hard to keep viable. Driving animals to Oregon or Eastern Washington to a USDA facility adds to costs and can disrupt other harvesting tasks. Developing and supporting local options helps strengthen Skagit agriculture.
In 2002, a group of farmers from the San Juan Islands formed the Island Grown Farmers Cooperative. Its impetus was to help island farmers maintain viable operations and resist development pressures, the same sort of pressures that Skagit farmers confront.
IGFC quickly grew beyond the islands, and the co-op now includes about 80 farms across four counties. A mobile slaughter unit can go to farms, which is especially important on the islands where transportation costs remain high.
Recently, IGFC built and opened new multi-million dollar facilities at the Port of Skagit in Burlington, including a retail arm, Northwest Local Meats. The new facility adds a bigger livestock processing center to its mobile slaughter unit, giving the co-op a significant boost to the operation’s scale and stabilizing the local industry. Olson, who serves on IGFC’s board, said the goal is to serve more producers and offer greater flexibility.
According to Mesman, who also serves on the board, IGFC opens up markets. “It gives the opportunity to small operations to compete in the world and market their product direct to the consumer or to a restaurant or a store,” he said.
The local butchers, custom shops, and IGFC provide a necessary infrastructure for animal-based agriculture to thrive and help farmers develop their businesses. Like any part of Skagit agriculture, maintaining that infrastructure is essential for continued agricultural success.
“Any service infrastructure for farmers in this region is valuable,” said Olson.
Olson is a first generation farmer, starting up in Skagit fifteen years ago raising vegetables and chickens. He quickly added hogs. He found that he enjoyed raising them more than chickens, but he could not make hogs a significant part of the business without access to convenient USDA processing plants that could serve farm his size. Becoming a member of the co-op and taking advantage of its increased reach is allowing Olson to increase that part of Well Fed Farm’s operation about five times.
This also adds value to the product, one of the best ways to increase a farmer’s income. “You’re taking an animal and cutting it up to your specifications,” explained Olson. “You get to put your name, your brand, on the product, and then you can take it and do your own marketing and get top dollar for your animals, your meat.”
Many consumers in Western Washington want to support local agriculture and are willing to pay more to support their local farmers, including meat producers. Some of the “consuming public want to know where that food is coming from,” said Mesman. Farmers markets and farm-to-table restaurants pay a premium for local food, too, because their clientele value that connection, said Olson.
So farmers and consumers benefit from a full range of options.
Olson sees local meat processing as part of the larger agricultural base that benefits from diversity, which enhances economic and community stability.
“The more diverse the agricultural landscape is and the more healthy pieces of it can coexist within the same foodshed in the same area,” said Olson, “the more resilient that foodshed is going to be and the more options that producers are going to have around here.” Livestock, Olson believes, “can be an integral part” of Skagit’s agricultural future.
Ensuring that future is a vibrant one is a common, worthy goal.
By Adam Sowards: info@skagitonians.org