Episode 215: Adirondack Grazers Cooperative

Meet Sarah Teale, documentary filmmaker and founding member of Adirondack Grazers Cooperative, a group of beef producers from small to mid-scale, family farms in New York and Vermont that naturally raise and finish beef. The Co Op’s mission is to maximize member revenue by developing sales in wholesale and specialty markets not easily available to individual farmers. Tune in as Erin Fairbanks chats with Sarah on a brand new episode of The Farm Report. They discuss the co-op model, it’s successes and shortcomings, and the distribution challenges that small farmers face in 2014. Sarah is also creating a documentary film to tell the story of Adirondack Grazers and simultaneously highlight the loss of family farms in today’s agricultural landscape. Learn how serious this issue is as Sarah describes just how much farmland is being lost today and what we need to do to reverse the trend. This program was brought to you by Heritage Foods USA. “For us – wholesale is what we can manage. If it comes to managing small pieces of beef for individual restaurants we can’t handle that, it’s too much work.” [06:00] “The nice thing about a co-op is that we can encompass any size farm because we’re a group.” [07:00] “There needs to be a bigger more cohesive transportation system in place and that’s what we’re working on next.” [13:00] “New York state is losing a family farm every three days. It’s scary. It’s been a disaster for a while but it’s getting really bad.” [19:00] “I think co-ops work quite well. We’d like to be a model for other people if they want to do it. We’re writing a how-to and we can hand over the information.” [25:00] –Sarah Teale on The Farm ReportSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.