Grass-fed beef on the menu

[grassfarmer]

HT, You imply that rules or laws only apply to wheat and barley - not true. It is illegal for me to sell uninspected beef, to sell Provincially inspected beef to customers in another province and it is illegal for a dairy farmer to sell milk to outside the SM system. The idea we live in a cowboy society with no rules or regulations apart from the CWB is bogus.

Allfarmer, sure there will be plenty "value added" going on in future on the grain side. Rather like Kato's example of the live beef price in Manitoba compared to the US or Alberta that extra value generated won't be accruing in ranchers pockets.

Value adding by definition requires a low cost raw material to start with - if the CWB made such a bad job as some guys alledge and returned the lowest prices to farmers anywhere in the world how come the "value adders" weren't building processing facilities in the past but are starting to build them now when anti-cwb farmers are anticipating higher prices? Please explain that to me because it would appear to totally defy logic.

[riders2010]

For curiosity sake how do you sell your product to the restaurants, by the half or individual cuts as in what the supermarket price is?

[grassfarmer]

Riders, this was an experimental one off sale - they took a whole beef quartered where they usually buy primals.
All our other sales are from 1/4 to whole beefs, we don't do individual cuts.

[sumdumguy]

I like marbelled beef, lentil screening fed best. As
for your stand on the board, to deny others rights
is not cool if you enjoy your own rights. You are
hypocritical.

[riders2010]

Thanks for reply gf, I sure would like to see more cattlemen or grain producers have their product as near as possible to all there is in canadian consumption, hopefully the experiment continues on for you and others.

I do not agree with your position on the cwb staying as is, but you do make some points simular to what many are saying. Particularly about if the cwb price was so low then why not the development of processing etc. and if getting rid of cwb means higher producer prices then why is processing going to increase. My answer to that is because this is a intertwined battle not only on numbers but of philosophy and politics. The far right wants to show everyone that the collective way is far inferior to the all by myself way. But the problem there is they are just as hypocritical as anyone is because the all myself guys usually are the ones scheming every gov program there is to acheive their goals. This will be no different once the cwb is changed. There will be pasta plants etc, but they will be built on the money coming from gov through employee subsidies, new business subsidies etc. The small amount of money now going to assist the farm will be phased out and given to this movement, there have been hints that the grow forward bullshit will be changed. So sneakily and ironically in the name of the true capitalism without gov help, we will see massive amounts of gov money used by the corporates to promote the idea of I can do it by myself.

There will be some but no huge benefit what so ever to the farmer from the cwb being changed in the long run. Our gov is using this issue to say they are for farmers but in reality they are trying to kill any philosophy associated with the lib and ndp. The lib and ndp are in my opinion right in the position that the massive corporates are screwing the individual farmer, but wrong on how to correct it through the cwb, at least the way it was working. The cwb had a great opportunity that was missed to show it could be a good thing but got tied up in their own bullshit and imho had people not capeable of running it to be effective. Instead of telling the world we have this massive amount of world's best wheat to sell so what is the highest price, they went with the idea we have this massive amount of wheat to sell so who wants to help us out and take it off our hands, and in this process did not want to listen to us farmers.

[riders2010]

sumdumguy, the neighbor we get our beef from uses peas in the ration for awhile near the end. Never tasted any beef as good or as tender, so by your post pulses seem to have a positive effect on quality or at least what we think is quality. lol

[riders2010]

GF for us yo yos in terms of beef carcass aging what is meant by wet in the bag process? Just trying to figure out why the store stuff seems to have a taste to it sometimes.

[burnt]

Excellent points Riders2010. Very balanced. Everyone thinks they have the silver bullet.

[grassfarmer]

Yes, I agree Burnt a good post from Riders2010. The only bit I would disagree with is that the CWB "had a great opportunity that was missed to show it could be a good thing but got tied up in their own bullshit and imho had people not capeable of running it to be effective." I would say the issue got more tied up by the polarized ideology among grain growers than the CWB's own BS.
You can't say they didn't listen to farmers though because the directors elected represented the wishes of the majority of the electorate. This has been the biggest weakness of the anti-cwb side. If they wanted change vote for it and if you are in the majority your side wins. The anti side were split between voting with their drills, not voting in cwb elections and the minority that voted for reformers like Tom Jackson. At the end of the day though people like Tom were never elected because not enough people thought they were the right choice at the ballot box.

On the beef question wet ageing is the new method by which all the big processors age beef nowadays. They kill the beef, chill it and then break it into primals which they vacuum wrap and ship out of the plant straight away. The beef is sitting in it's own juice for however long it takes to get to its destination. So most 14 day aged beef you buy at the store has been "aged" lying in a plastic bag,in it's own juice, in a reefer getting hauled across the country from plant to store. Its a factory system designed for quicker turnover at the plant but one which compromises quality in my opinion.

Dry ageing is the age old method whereby it hangs dry in a chiller for 14 or more days and the weight of the half hanging on a hook stretches and tenderizes the beef as well as concentrating the flavor due to the resulting shrinkage from moisture loss.

[grassfarmer]

Sumdumguy, You too must be hypocritical then if you want the "marketing choice" option but want to deny the right of those board supporters to retain the single desk selling authority. Cuts both ways.

[burnt]

grassfarmer, I must be getting a bit jaded in my older years because I no longer believe that democracy = representative or responsible government. There is this little hindrance to the process called "bureaucracy".

Bureaucracy is the toxic, persistent residue that accumulates behind generations of successive governments.

Its successive layers provide an unyielding barrier between the elected official and the unwashed electorate, propagating itself under the guise of providing service to the constituency.

There is no institution - from religious to political to agriculturally oriented - that escapes this cursed burden once it matures into a "trusted" entity.

Thus, just as is shown in the federal election, getting your representative of choice into a seat does not mean that he will represent your choice!

[Happytrails]

From GF's defense of the CWB it is apparent that he has a very poor grasp of how it works. I am even willing to bet that he has never signed a delivery contract with them. Talk about ideology driven. My guess is that he is parroting one of his NFU friends. HT

[grassfarmer]

OK then HT in an effort to educate me could you answer the question I posed Allfarmer?

"If the CWB made such a bad job as some guys alledge and returned the lowest prices to farmers anywhere in the world how come the "value adders" weren't building processing facilities in the past but are starting to build them now when anti-cwb farmers are anticipating higher prices?"

Please explain that to me because it would appear to totally defy logic.

[ASRG]

grassfarmer: I've seen beef aged 21 days, never 32 days! How much extra does the abbatoir charge for aging tha long?

[grassfarmer]

They didn't charge any different, once it's hung up there isn't any more work in it afterall. I guess if I was doing a lot like this there might be an increase as it takes up more chiller space and a little more electricity. I think the butcher probably charges enough on custom processing already to cover the extra cost.