WEST POINT, Ga.—At a time when thousands of America’s independent cattle farmers are going under each year, and herds falling to a 70-year low, one young couple believes they have found a way to save their family farm.
Livestock farming is now a far cry from what it once was, when ranchers would sell into competitive markets with prices based on quality, as well as prevailing supply and demand.
While Avery grew up on the Georgia farm, Marc was raised on Jersey, a small island in the English Channel. They met in Jersey where they both were working office jobs in the finance industry.
In 2019, Avery was told by her father that the family’s farm, originally founded by her grandfather after he returned home to Georgia from a POW camp in Germany after World War II, would be sold. The herd had been sold off, down to 80 cattle, in order to pay debts, and the farm had fallen into what Marc calls a “death spiral.”
What was left was no longer able to generate enough income to keep the business going. Avery and Marc decided to quit their jobs and move to Georgia, hoping that the farm could be saved.
“We are now the third generation, and there’s always been something that’s drawn me to this place,” Avery told The Epoch Times. “It would have broken my heart to see it parceled up, and houses and subdivisions built all over it.
“I just felt like it needed to have one last chance to see if we could turn it around.”
Struggling to Stay Afloat
They soon realized that the farm could not survive the way it was being operated.“We were just selling the calf crop at the local stockyards—that’s generally how these cow-calf operations sell,” Marc said. But they weren’t getting enough from the processors to pay their expenses, and they had to find another way.
They decided, rather than selling to the big packing companies, to try selling directly to customers.
“It was a leap of faith, but we had no other option,” Avery said. “In the three years we’d been running this place, we had a net operating loss of nearly $600,000, so it was either pack it in and leave with our tail between our legs, or take an even bigger leap and see if this will work.”
They used their social media skills to build a base of customers, but making the switch cost them both time and money, depleting their savings.
“We just had to bite the bullet and keep everything back for two years with no farm revenue,”Marc said.
Avery had already built up a following on Instagram, so they had the beginnings of a customer base. During the two years of transition, they designed their online store and expanded their following, and Avery sharpened her photography skills for a steady stream of online posts.
They found a company in Alabama that would do the meat processing for them. Once processed, the beef is returned to them, stored in a walk-in freezer on their farm, and shipped out to customers via UPS, packed in dry ice.
“They want to know where their products are coming from,” Avery said. “They want to know it’s a family behind it, and they want to know the people and the story behind the products they’re purchasing.”
After years in the red, this new business model has returned the farm to profitability.
Learning the Business of Farming
While they were figuring out the sales side of the business, they also had to quickly get up to speed on running a farm.
“Everything has to be done in a pretty tight window—fertilizing hay fields, working the cattle, breeding the cattle,” Marc said.
“The existing herd wasn’t on a controlled breeding season, so we brought in new cows, and we tried to get everything on the same breeding schedule,” he said. “So really just scheduling out the whole year, figuring out when we had to do things, what had to be done, and figuring out how to do all those things at the same time.”
To make the farm viable for the long term, they had to rebuild the herds. They now have about 450 head in total, including breeding cows, stocker cattle, and feeder cattle.
But expanding the herd also meant much higher feeding costs, particularly in winter months.
“We had a couple of really big struggles the first two winters, because our existing hay fields could not produce enough hay for that number of head,” Avery said.
The cost of buying hay in winter exceeded $100,000, and they needed to figure out the number of cattle that would generate enough income while also being affordable to feed. They also realized they had to improve how they managed the land.
“My dad had actually set up a pretty decent rotational grazing system, so we looked to improve upon that,” Avery said. “We added in some additional pastures so that we could cut down the paddock size and make them smaller.”
A larger number of smaller pastures allowed the remaining paddocks that were left fallow to recover faster. But for all their efforts, they were still at the mercy of natural elements.
“Nothing ever goes right, and it always goes wrong at the worst possible time,” Marc said. “But there’s nothing you can do to stop it, and you just have to keep going.”
Avery said the experience has taught her resilience and patience.
“You are on Mother Nature’s schedule,” she said. “Working with animals, it teaches you a whole new level of patience—they’re not necessarily going to do what you want them to do.
Does Family Farming Have a Future in America?
Family farms in America are steadily going under as corporate packers continue to vertically integrate and consolidate control over beef, pork and poultry markets. Small farmers also struggle to compete with larger feedlots. They are aging and few farms are being passed on to the next generation.
“I think a lot of the older generation who are now farming are seeing how difficult it’s becoming and are either dissuading their kids from coming back to the farm or they’re seeing a payday and they’re just cashing out,” Marc said. “The younger generation like us see how difficult it was for their parents, and they want nothing to do with it, but I think if they can make it work and help support the family, it’s absolutely worth it.”
Asked if there is a future for cattle farmers in America, he says, “Yes, 100 percent, and I think this is the future.
“I think moving away from the big packers is the way forward,” he said. “I think every town should go back to having a processing plant, either state or federally inspected, and then everyone should go back to buying from their local farmer.”
