Feeding market for ‘locally raised’

LIVE STOCK: Patrick McNiff, owner of Pat’s Pastured, first began raising chickens and pigs as a hobby while working at Casey Farm. But when they began selling, he decided there was enough demand to quit working for a paycheck and start out on his own. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
LIVE STOCK: Patrick McNiff, owner of Pat’s Pastured, first began raising chickens and pigs as a hobby while working at Casey Farm. But when they began selling, he decided there was enough demand to quit working for a paycheck and start out on his own. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Pat’s Pastured owner Patrick McNiff describes three general types of New England farmer operating in 2013:
The family farmer who grew up on the land and has evolved the old business to survive the modern market.
The gentleman farmer who enjoys owning a few head of cattle, but doesn’t rely on them to balance his checkbook.
And the idealistic entrepreneur who discovered local food and sustainable agriculture somewhere between the college quad and the first desk job.
McNiff, a Long Island native and Providence College graduate, puts himself squarely in that last category.
“Growing up, our livestock was a Cockapoo,” McNiff said. “It wasn’t until the summer after I graduated from PC and was working in an urban-gardening program for at-risk youth that I fell in love with the land.”
A decade after first getting hooked on farming, Pat’s Pastured, McNiff’s meat and poultry company, is a leading purveyor of locally raised and processed chicken, turkey, pork, beef and lamb.
It’s one of only two farms in the state licensed to slaughter its poultry – the only one in a 22-foot-long mobile unit – and this year the farm was recognized as one of the state’s homegrown success stories in The Rhode Island Foundation’s “Our Backyard” campaign.
McNiff’s entry into sustainable agriculture was well-timed.
He discovered farming as the local food movement was hitting high gear nationally, but while there was still a major unmet demand for pasture-raised meat and poultry in Rhode Island.
His first few chickens and pigs were raised as a hobby while working at the historic Casey Farm in North Kingstown.
But when he slaughtered and sold them, Rhode Islanders snapped them up, convincing him there was enough demand to quit working for a paycheck and start out on his own.
He leased an 87-acre farm from the East Greenwich Land Trust and began raising livestock in the polyculture, grass-fed and free-range style advocated by influential Virginia farmer Joel Salatin.
Although McNiff has found no shortage of demand for his products, there are still plenty of challenges to running a 21st-century farm. Government regulations for slaughtering and packaging meat are strict and expensive, and by the time McNiff started raising livestock, there was little processing capacity in southern New England.
Large animals like cows and pigs must be slaughtered at a U.S. Department of Agriculture-licensed facility, but at that time the closest ones around were in Vermont or New York.
So McNiff and other farmers with the Rhode Island Raised Livestock Association worked with two companies – Johnston Beef in Johnston and Westerly Packing in Westerly – to develop a local USDA-licensed processing option for Rhode Island farms. (Johnston Beef slaughters the animals and Westerly Packing cuts, processes and packs them.)
Those facilities keep about $1.7 million in processing activity in the state each year.
With local processing and a well-developed network of farmers markets and a respected restaurant scene, the biggest challenge McNiff said he deals with now is, predictably, the scarcity of land.
To raise grass-fed livestock humanely, you need enough pasture land and McNiff said there just isn’t much available in the country’s smallest state. Energy and feed costs are also much higher here than in the South or Midwest.
On the plus side, McNiff said when he speaks with farmers from those less-expensive states, they lament not having the same market for premium, locally produced food that exists in the Northeast.
Right now, about half of Pat’s Pastured sales are through farmers markets, with one-quarter direct to restaurants and the remainder through Community Sponsored Agriculture subscriptions.
Going forward, McNiff said his goal is to continue to diversify into more value-added products such as sausage and smoked meat.
One thing helping local farmers is chefs are focusing on using formerly neglected pieces of animals in creative ways, allowing meat producers to generate revenue from parts like feet, snouts and heads they used to give away.
“A big part of the local food movement is we have best chefs in country and working with them has made farmers better about trying to avoid waste,” McNiff said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Pat’s Pastured
OWNER: Patrick McNiff
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Farm
LOCATION: 830 South Road, East Greenwich
EMPLOYEES: Four full time
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2009
ANNUAL SALES: NA

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