Beefing Up Local Meat Production: Studying Constraints on Local Meat in Southern Minnesota

We ask the question: what are the constraints on local meat production? Farmers who sell locally are making a decision to participate in a local meat system. What influences their decision? What limits their decision? To answer this question, we interviewed Minnesota beef farmers about the constraints on their local beef operations, we gathered a list of eighteen constraints. Of these constraints, we argue that the most significant is a shortage of slaughterhouses. In our interviews, farmers talked about slaughterhouses going out of business, being too far away, having high wait times, or not having the facilities or certifications to meet farmers\u27 needs. Slaughterhouses are a key part of local meat systems, they provide crucial capital that allows farmers to get their products to their desired markets. Slaughterhouses, like farmers, make a decision to participate in a local meat system by accepting cattle from local farmers. So what is limiting that decision? Why aren\u27t there enough slaughterhouses to serve the growing market for local meat? This question is beyond our scope, so we focus on one particular issue: how does the location of slaughterhouses, in particular the distance between farms and slaughterhouses, affect processing capacity for local meat? To answer this, we tested the applicability of Hotelling\u27s relationship between business demand catchment and output. We built catchment areas based upon minimum driving distance to slaughterhouses, but did not find a statistically significant relationship between the amount of animals within a slaughterhouse\u27s catchment area and slaughterhouse revenue. We did observe a pattern of spatial dispersion for slaughterhouses throughout the state, with a significant correlation between a slaughterhouse\u27s productivity and the inverse distance of that facility from a major highway. Our results provide useful insights on the shortage of processing that many local food systems experience, while our approach provides a useful framework for future research on demand for slaughterhouses in a food system