The county’s economic development agency 1Berkshire hosted Berkshire Agricultural Ventures’ “Local Meat Processing: Key Research and Future Directions” presentation in their downtown Pittsfield offices Monday.
“Back in 2020, Berkshire Agricultural Ventures identified that there was a real opportunity to support farmers, especially livestock farmers, who make up about 50% of our agriculture in this community, by expanding meat processing capacity in the region,” said Jake Levin, the group’s local food systems program manager.
One of the key examples drawn from a survey of over 70 regional farmers is added-value products- turning meat byproducts from undesirable detritus into something profitable for local producers.
“Farmers end up with a lot of bones in their cold storage, or they end up just throwing those bones away. No one really is that interested in buying bones," Levin continued. "But as soon as one pound of bones is turned into one pound of really delicious and really healthy bone broth, it immediately becomes a desirable product for consumers.”
Another is pet treats.
“10 to 15% of the animal is in organs that most American consumers don't aren't interested in buying or eating," Levin told WAMC. "But once those products, the lungs, hearts, livers, are dehydrated and marketed as pet treats, all of a sudden people love them and want to feed them to their dogs and cats, and this way they're giving their dogs and cats a treat, and they're supporting their local farmers by turning product that usually would be thrown away into something viable.”
Per the survey’s findings, other products Berkshire farmers can focus on to unlock untapped economic benefits include meat sticks, jerky, sausages, and meat pies.
Given the significance of livestock farming to the Berkshire agricultural community, Levin says the region must find ways to support and expand their market, especially as agricultural production continues to consolidate.
“Over 85% of our meat-processing facilities in this country are controlled by just four multinational corporations, so that creates a real chokehold and really limits opportunities for our small processors and small livestock farmers,” he explained.
While the cost of opening a processing center in the county is prohibitively expensive – upwards of $2 million to $5 million – Berkshire Agricultural Ventures says that a closer regional option is close to being online.
The presentation highlighted Reed Farm in Sunderland – about an hour east of the Berkshires in the Pioneer Valley – and its efforts to bust through that bottleneck.
“Currently, if you want your poultry to be processed USDA, you'd have to go to Rhode Island or New York or New Jersey. There was one in Maine, but I believe that has recently closed. So that's a pretty far away for someone to go with their chickens- So that's a financial stress, it's using fuel, it's causing stress for the animals to be traveling for that long," said Poultry farmer and processer Kat Chang. “We started back in 2019 and really started in earnest in 2020. The pandemic really highlighted the importance of our small processors who play an integral part of our local food system, and we were fortunate to receive some grant funding from both federal and state grants, and that really rocketed us into the position we're in today, where we're going to be a USDA poultry processing facility in the very near future, in a couple months, and that will make us the only USDA poultry processing facility in Massachusetts.”
Chang says it’s been a struggle for the farm to navigate state and federal laws, which are written with bigger producers in mind.
“As a smaller producer and processor, we're focusing more on our impact on the environment," she told WAMC. "We're focusing more, perhaps, on the quality of life for our animals. Having it be smaller means you can pay more attention to it and more into the details, and I think that we're very lucky to be in Massachusetts, because Massachusetts has done an incredible job of supporting their agricultural producers and food system thinkers.”
Democratic 1st Berkshire District State Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier expressed frustration that Monday’s presentation had too broad a focus.
“Between 1Berkshires, Berkshire Agricultural Ventures, the earmarks that the legislature has been able to get for this work, they're Berkshire-centric, and so I was hoping in the presentation, they would have centered more the benefits for the Berkshires," she explained. "Now, with the responses to the questions, we understand that those benefits will come, and I'm grateful for the work that they do, and I appreciate the complexity involved in any of this work. Meat processing is very complex, but I'm impatient to see the benefits for the Berkshires.”
As federal resources for Massachusetts continue to wither under the Trump administration, Farley-Bouvier says the commonwealth is entering a time of scarcity and potential cuts – putting the onus on funding recipients to show local receipts.
“When we go to Boston, the Berkshire delegation, we need to be able to say what the benefits are to our own constituents," the state representative told WAMC. "And so, when you are advocating for very scarce funds, you need to make that clear and make that up front.”
