What are the difficulties in raising, and then selling pasture fed beef?
The difficulty with raising pasture fed beef is that it requires more land and labor per unit of production than industrialized agriculture. To raise cattle properly on pasture, animals must be rotated often. Depending on how many animals per acre and the quality of the forage, rotation should be between daily or twice weekly. Here in the Northeast, where the pasture growing season is limited, dried hay and haylage (composted fermented hay) need to be harvested or acquired to feed through the winter. In addition, it takes longer for the animal to grow to market weight. Industrialized feedlots finish cattle at 12-14 months of age versus 18-24 months for pasture raised animals. The cattle also finish at lower weights. Most farmers in this arena are much smaller and cannot benefit from the economies of scale of industrialized agriculture operations. All of these factors raise the costs per unit of this type of production. The difficulties of selling this type of beef are multifaceted. The
