Edited to add: The Aug 26 event is full, no longer taking reservations

With the high cost of retail beef, and no relief in sight, based on input cost, along with limited national processors, Agrilife is hosting a program to provide some answers for direct marketing.

Beef direct sales

Interest in direct beef sales skyrocketed during the pandemic, along with a public desire to make that local connection in meat sales, so two Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service specialists are planning programs to help navigate this potential new venture for beef producers.

Justin Benavidez, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension economist, and Tiffany Lashmet, J.D., AgriLife Extension agricultural law specialist, both in Amarillo and the Texas A&M Department of Agricultural Economics, have planned two "Where's the Beef? Legal and Economic Considerations for Direct Beef Sales Businesses" meetings.
The extensive programs will be offered for free and include a copy of a program handbook. Lunch will also be provided. Registration is required: Aug. 26 in Brenham.
"Basically, we started seeing an increasing number of beef producers interested in direct sales, and on the flip side we saw a lot of the public interested in buying beef directly from a producer," Lashmet said. "There's a lot of information out there about how to market, but there wasn't much looking at the ins and outs of the legal and economic issues.
"This program we have designed will provide practical, real-world information to anyone interested in the direct beef sales business."

Do you know if they're going to make the handbook available to the public since the event is full? I'd be interested in a copy if so.

Interesting. We have a custom slaughter facility and get regular calls from producers wanting us to slaughter for them so they can directly sell to the public. We can't do it right now because our license only covers not for sale custom processing.

The problem we hear from them is they can't get consistent slaughter dates and when they do get a date the dates are way out and there are not enough spots available where they can keep up with the demand from their customers. More producers wanting to do this is good but they are going to run into the same problem of no where to have their cattle processed.

We are in the process of designing and building a new facility to up our custom processing capacity but also have inspected processing but that capacity won't last long given the number current producers that call us let alone new producers.

Sounds like a great time to be in the cattle processing business.

I'm sure it'll be a good program that will be really relevant as there's lots of folks jumping into that space.

I'll also throw out a reminder that the Beef Cattle Short Course is coming up in early August, and there's a Beef 706 course about a week after that.

BCSC is obviously more ranching/total cattle industry education in general, but if you're looking for something closer to the direct marketing program, 706 goes into grading, different cuts, some processing, etc. its a really good program.

Direct to consumer beef marketing does not have to equal retail individual meat cut sales like the shelf at HEB. Selling quarters, halves, wholes, and other quantities of custom cut beef from a small processor who is not USDA inspected is not illegal if you're selling it ahead of time and don't store it yourself.

agfan2013 said:

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I'm sure it'll be a good program that will be really relevant as there's lots of folks jumping into that space.

I'll also throw out a reminder that the Beef Cattle Short Course is coming up in early August, and there's a Beef 706 course about a week after that.

BCSC is obviously more ranching/total cattle industry education in general, but if you're looking for something closer to the direct marketing program, 706 goes into grading, different cuts, some processing, etc. its a really good program.

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Re the Beef 706 course...