Madison County, Montana

Montana Black, Southwest Montana’s newest and most innovative branded beef marketing program, has been awarded a $20,000 grant from the Montana Department of Agriculture’s Growth Through Agriculture program. Montana Black is a value-added agriculture project of the non-profit Madison County Economic Development Council (MCEDC). It develops markets for beef products from cattle that are naturally raised on Montana’s ranches. Its goal is to bring Montana beef back to the diet of Montanans while paying local ranchers premium prices for finishing their cattle within the state. The $20,000 grant will help fund a marketing campaign to promote and sell Montana Black beef products in Southwest Montana and beyond.

“This grant is an enormous statement of support that our program is on track. We already have local ranchers and local processors on board. We have also developed a growing market of consumers who are demanding natural, local beef that is tastier and definitely healthier than commodity beef,” says Sam Korsmoe, the executive director of the MCEDC. “This grant will help us go from strength to strength.”

The one-year old beef marketing program has been supported with grants from the 3 Rivers Community Development Grant Program, the Montana Department of Commerce, and Mr. Bob Sumpter, a private citizen from Big Sky, along with allocated funds from the MCEDC budget. The MCEDC is a community supported non-profit organization. Its mission statement is to enhance business and economic development in Madison County in a manner that respects the communities’ agricultural, recreational, environmental, and cultural interests.

John Franklin, the Agriculture Development Council chairman, noted that the Growth Through Agriculture program has received a fair number of requests for funding branded beef programs in the past but many of these projects have encountered obstacles which limited their success. “After questioning Montana Black branded beef officials, the Agriculture Development Council feels confident that they are addressing those difficulties in an effort to promote a successful branded beef program,” said Franklin when asked why the Montana Black proposal was chosen among so many other proposals.

Presently, nearly all of Montana’s cow/calf ranchers sell their calves into the commodity market. They receive commodity market prices which are often not high enough to keep their operations financially sustainable. Since most of the state’s calves are shipped out, most Montanans eat commodity beef which is shipped in on frozen food trucks from other states. Montana’s calves are finished in gigantic feedlots in the Midwest on a grass-less diet of heated corn-based feed and an array of drugs to get them to market weight as quickly and efficiently as possible. Montana Black cattle are naturally raised without any kind of steroids, growth hormones, or antibiotics. They primarily eat grass, with some grains in the winter, and they never leave the state of Montana. Unlike commodity beef (commonly called ‘boxed beef’) which travels an average of 1,500 miles and changes hand 33 times before reaching the consumer, Montana Black beef products only travel from the ranch to meat processors in Whitehall and Sheridan (currently) and then directly to the consumer.

“We were looking for a strategy to help our ranchers get better prices and keep them in ranching as opposed to sub-dividing their land or selling out completely,” says Dave Schulz, the chairman of the MCEDC and a former rancher from Sheridan. “The Montana Black program is definitely a step in the right direction because it offers our ranchers an option to the commodity market. Also, we learned that Montanans really want to eat Montana beef rather than commodity beef.”

Korsmoe says Montana Black is much more than a value-added agriculture project because a successful local branded beef program has several positive spin offs and impacts. “This is a health project because natural beef is much healthier. It is an economic development project because we keep our cattle in the state for local processing and pay premium prices to our ranchers. It is also an environmental and land conservation project because by keeping our ranches sustainable we are keeping our ranchers on the land. They are the best land stewards we have and all of us need to support them,” says Korsmoe.

Consumers who want to order Montana Black beef should call the MCEDC office in Ennis at 682-5923 or by email at info@madcoedc.org. A beef product list as well as more information on the program can be found on the project website at www.MontanaBlack.org. For more information, contact Sam Korsmoe, Executive Director of the Madison County Economic Development Council.