Overall consumption of beef in the US is said to be on the decline, but the same cannot be said for grass-fed beef.
The grass-fed beef market has been thriving and it's expected to continue to grow steadily in the years to come. You can now find grass-fed items in many different grocery venues, served by popular meal delivery services, and also sold at different restaurants around the US.
The grass-fed beef consumer market has been fueling some growing interest with many consumers, for finding quality, local, and grass-fed meat. They don't want to buy their meat from some big chain, they want to know where it's coming from directly.
And that's given rise to a new way of trying to meet the demand, by way of cow-funding.
One startup known as Crowd Cow has helped to introduce the concept to consumers, by establishing a platform that creates an internet crowdfunding operation for individual cows that will come from a variety of different independent ranchers.
The consumers will be able to claim a share of the cow and once all of the shares have been claimed, that is when the cow is going to be processed and the meat properly packaged and shipped to the consumers who held the shares.
The creators of the company say that the platform is akin to having a farmers market on the internet; it allows people to buy the meat directly from the independent rancher.
And Crowd Cow isn't only selling grass-fed beef either, they are also going to be looking at selling other products as well and one of them is Japanese A5 Wagyu that will be coming right from Japan and it's expected that it will be sold for around $80.
When it comes to meeting demand in the grass-fed consumer market, Crowd Cow prides itself on offering grass-fed and grass-finished products that haven't been saturated with antibiotics.
They say that they are finding more consumers these days are willing to buy in bulk when it comes to finding a good meat product and sometimes they will get families that order 200 lbs or more at a time.
Aside from helping families to find a good price on quality meat, Crowd Cow is also helping independent ranchers by enabling them to get more of the cow sold, rather than just the popular cuts that might easily get picked up by a variety of vendors.
Not The Only Ones..
There are also similar business ventures to Crowd Cow, that are looking to crowdfund food products in the same way, they are companies like Farmable, Crowd Carnivore, and Meatme. These creative ideas have helped to establish a new supply chain by combining crowdfunding technology with the ranching industry.
Pics:
Pixabay
Pixabay
20th Century Fox Television / via hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/showthread.php?p=88696739
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/dining/beef-consumption-emissions.html
https://www.dallasnews.com/life/farm-to-table/2017/07/11/grass-fed-beef-crowdfunding-startup-farmers-market-meets-internet
http://ncfacanada.org/meatme-crowdfund-a-cow-pig-lamb-or-chicken-for-dinner/
@doitvoluntarily/the-paleo-diet-is-the-most-popular-with-u-s-consumers-right-now
http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2016-03-04/crowd-carnivore-connects-beef-farmers-to-customers/7221142
http://www.farmable.me/
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/feb/21/cow-crowd-sustainable-beef-organic-food-seattle