Order of Man - Re-Thinking the American Beef Supply with Greg Putnam

00:00:00.000 If you're like the other 95% of people on the planet, you too eat meat, but too little time is

00:00:05.400 spent considering where one of the largest sources of meat comes from in America, cattle. With broken

00:00:12.580 food supply chains exposed during COVID, outsourced beef and processing to foreign countries, and the

00:00:19.100 deceptive practices of those who label our beef products, it's really hard to know what you're

00:00:25.060 actually getting. My guest today, former Navy SEAL Greg Putnam, is doing something about it

00:00:29.880 with a company he founded along with fellow Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy called Little Belt Cattle

00:00:34.880 Company. Greg and I discuss where our beef actually comes from, the balance between quality

00:00:40.820 and quantity cattle ranchers have to find, the pros and cons of large industrial beef processing

00:00:46.480 compared to the smaller local ranches, what quote-unquote grass-fed and organic beef actually

00:00:52.500 means, and I think that would surprise you, and the importance of being connected with

00:00:56.420 our food sources and why we need to rethink the American beef supply.

00:01:00.380 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly

00:01:05.320 chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every

00:01:10.280 time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life.

00:01:17.200 This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said

00:01:22.520 and done, you can call yourself a man. Men, what is going on today? My name is Ryan

00:01:28.280 Mickler. I'm your host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. If you're

00:01:32.780 new, this is a movement to reclaim and restore masculinity. We see it everywhere from sports

00:01:38.120 and politics and cultural issues, entertainment, even the medical industry, education, you name

00:01:45.520 it. We can see that there's a real void of strong, bold, audacious, courageous men stepping

00:01:52.700 up, leading their families, leading their communities, leading their businesses the way

00:01:56.200 that we need them to. And it's a scary time. But if we don't step up in a really powerful

00:02:01.340 way as men and work together, band together and help each other, it's only going to get

00:02:05.600 worse. And that's not to do any fear mongering or, you know, play into that narrative that we

00:02:13.800 often hear, but it is the reality. And I'm trying to do something about that by having

00:02:18.060 great guests on this podcast. We've got events, we've got programs, we've got a brotherhood

00:02:22.320 that we use. And today I've got a really, really important discussion on the beef supply in

00:02:28.420 America coming from a company outside of Montana. I'll get to that in just a minute. But speaking

00:02:32.900 of Montana, also want to mention my good friends and show sponsors and another company that's

00:02:38.020 doing great things out of Montana. And that is Montana Knife Company. Guys, if you're

00:02:42.700 looking for a great high quality knife, whether it's out in the field, on your everyday carry,

00:02:47.280 or maybe even in the kitchen, then you should look at Montana Knife Company. I'm going on

00:02:52.220 a hunt. I'm going to talk about that a little bit here later in the conversation, but I am

00:02:56.420 going on a hunt in Africa and you can bet that I will have my Montana Knife Company knives

00:03:01.840 with me. So I go everywhere with them. I always have one or two with me. I was looking through

00:03:06.820 them the other day. I think I've got about 17 of their knives, it looks like. So I am well

00:03:11.740 stocked on knives and you should be as well. Again, go to MontanaKnifeCompany.com and when

00:03:17.020 you check out, use the code ORDER OF MAN. All right, guys, let me get to my guest today.

00:03:22.980 His name is Greg Putnam. He spent 10 years in the SEAL teams and after service felt a strong

00:03:28.560 pull to get into cattle ranching as not only a way of life, but a way to continue to be in

00:03:34.360 service of the country after his military career. He and fellow Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy founded

00:03:39.780 Little Belt Cattle Company as a first generation cattle ranch in Montana in 2020. And with very

00:03:46.080 little experience in ranching, Greg and his team have created a notable cattle ranching operation

00:03:51.320 in an industry that isn't always too welcoming of newcomers. We talk a little bit about that in the

00:03:55.860 podcast. Greg has combined his military experience with a level of curiosity in the industry and

00:04:02.080 dedication to finding new and improved ways of supplying meat to Americans and they are making

00:04:07.100 big moves. Enjoy this one. Greg, what's up, brother? Thanks for joining me on the podcast.

00:04:12.920 Looking forward to this conversation today. Yeah, same here. Thanks a lot for having me on. We're

00:04:17.260 really excited to be here. Good. Yeah, with 98% of the population, I think it is, that eats meat,

00:04:23.200 I think it's important we discuss where we source our meat from. I got into hunting about eight years or

00:04:28.980 so ago, but there's a lot of people who are eating less than quality meat to, to put it nicely.

00:04:34.640 Yeah, absolutely. And I grew up hunting. That's kind of what, uh, started me down the, the meat path

00:04:40.640 myself. And, you know, it was funny when we actually started our business, um, Little Belt Cattle

00:04:45.440 Company, we were joking in the beginning, but we were saying, you know, for anybody that has tag soup,

00:04:50.100 but still wants to fill a Montana tag, we can fill your freezer for you.

00:04:53.760 Yeah. There you go. I like that. I actually got introduced to even just a cattle, I guess,

00:04:59.460 in general, because my ex in-laws had some property and they would buy either a cow or two cows per year.

00:05:05.960 And then my ex wife and I would go in on it and, uh, we'd split the cost of feed and split the cost

00:05:11.000 of having it butchered. And so we'd have half a cow each year that we could feed the family from.

00:05:15.520 And I love that model. But I think the problem then was unless you had property, unless you had the

00:05:22.640 space and you had the capacity to buy a cow or two, it just wasn't practical running down to Walmart or

00:05:28.860 wherever people get their meat from was way more practical, although not as great for them. And

00:05:35.360 obviously the economy as well. Yeah, for sure. I mean, but, but since you guys have done that,

00:05:41.540 right. In the same way, I feel like, um, with hunting, when you have a connection back to that

00:05:46.420 food, whatever it is, whether it's, you know, an elk or a deer that you shot or beef you produced,

00:05:50.640 or even knowing the producer that produced that product. Um, I think that connection back to our

00:05:55.620 food is something that's just super important. Something that a lot of people are looking for.

00:05:59.820 Um, and a big thing right now in the beef industry as a whole is knowing who and where your food comes

00:06:04.120 from. Um, and really truly knowing where that, that producer is because there's so much beef now in

00:06:09.680 particular that source from, you know, whether it's, it's imported from overseas with nothing wrong with

00:06:15.360 that. Right. But you have no idea, you know, how that animal is processed, um, how it was raised.

00:06:20.740 And there's really like no connection. And, you know, a big thing for us when we, when we started

00:06:25.680 this business was we wanted to feel the same way that if you share, you know, an elk tenderloin with

00:06:30.940 a friend, uh, that, that you knew where it came from, you knew the hard work that went into it.

00:06:35.840 You know, if that person ate half of it and scraped the rest of the trash, I mean, you'd be offended.

00:06:39.440 And they probably wouldn't do that to begin with, you know, knowing that the, just the level of

00:06:44.560 disrespect that that would kind of show, uh, not only to the, to the, you know, to the producer of

00:06:49.980 that animal, but also to the animal itself. And that's what we really wanted to, to build with

00:06:54.440 our business was, you know, kind of this connection, um, back to, to who and where your food comes

00:07:00.100 from and, and really lean into this kind of, you know, what does it take for local producers to be

00:07:05.720 able to compete on a larger scale? Um, and, and what does the marketplace look like for that?

00:07:11.180 And, you know, what we found is there, there's a lot of people that that's really important to them,

00:07:15.880 um, and knowing, and it's important to me, you know, knowing what type of food that I'm feeding

00:07:20.680 my family that I'm eating, um, you know, anybody that's had the, the good fortune of working with,

00:07:26.960 you know, a nutritionist or human performance folks, you know, the first thing they, they tell you

00:07:31.640 is it's, it's not just your fitness program, but it's your diet as well. And, you know, when you

00:07:36.320 start to look at, you know, all of those things combined, you know, for folks with like real

00:07:40.440 active lifestyles, um, you know, it just becomes super important. And, and, and again, I think a

00:07:46.520 big part of that is feeling good about the food that you're buying and eating and feeding your family.

00:07:53.260 Um, it's just something that's really important to consumers today.

00:07:55.960 Well, I, I also think there's a level of humility that comes with it when you know what's happening

00:08:01.560 with the entire supplier, the chain of where your food comes from, because, you know, you have a lot

00:08:07.160 of vegans and vegetarians who have an issue with, uh, the way animals are treated, for example.

00:08:14.640 Uh, and, and I would actually agree with that when you have these huge factories that, you know,

00:08:19.340 mistreat and abuse these animals. Uh, it's, it's actually not a real, I don't think a real moral

00:08:24.880 way to source our food. It has to happen. We have such a large population that I, I see that

00:08:29.560 there's a need for it. But when you are familiar with the entire process, there's a level of humility

00:08:37.300 towards that animal. You know, I remember, for example, the very first time I shot a large game,

00:08:42.440 it was a white tail deer in, in Texas. And I walked up onto that deer and I thought, man, like I was,

00:08:49.940 I was excited because I completed my objective, which was to successfully harvest a deer for me and my

00:08:54.180 family. But at the same time, I was a little, a little, a lot humble about it. I was like,

00:08:59.540 Oh, that's a beautiful animal. And I just took its life. And there was a lot more respect towards

00:09:04.720 that animal than any other hamburger or steak that I'd ever had in my entire life. And I think

00:09:10.680 that's what people need to realize in addition to other things is that, and maybe you're meaning

00:09:16.440 something different when you say connection, but that level of humility and connectedness to

00:09:21.240 our role in nature is crucial for me. Yeah. I mean, I think the connective part that I want

00:09:27.940 more people to be able to, to recognize that feeling is the same feeling when you open your

00:09:34.440 freezer for that deer, there's a level of appreciation and respect for where that animal

00:09:40.540 came from. And in the same feeling of, you know, excitement and all the hard work that it took to get

00:09:46.100 there. I don't know what the right word is. Um, I think it's a respect, but it's not a sadness,

00:09:53.460 but there's a, you're recognizing the fact that that animal, you know, that, that it was processed to,

00:10:00.380 to fuel you right. And your family. And I think that level of respect has kind of been lost through

00:10:06.000 these like large industrial type farming things. And again, I'm not here to say we do it, you know,

00:10:12.260 we just, this is what we do, right. But all of our staff goes through low stress stock handling.

00:10:19.420 Um, they're all, they've all been through programs that, you know, basically really, um, highlight

00:10:25.160 and showcase and certify the humane treatment and care of those animals throughout. And fundamentally,

00:10:31.080 you know, our job in our business is to care for those animals to the highest level possible.

00:10:36.840 And so at the end of that cycle, when those cattle go to the processor, there is a feeling,

00:10:43.180 um, similar to what you just described on our end as producers. And, you know, and I think for us,

00:10:48.860 the more that we're out there talking about what that looks like, talking about the real people that

00:10:54.160 are involved in how much skill and time and effort goes into the quality and care of those animals.

00:11:01.160 Um, it, it builds more of that connection or more of that respect for where that comes from,

00:11:06.980 when people actually see and can kind of get more insight into that. Because I think a big thing in

00:11:13.840 the U S food system is that, you know, because of the convenience of it, a lot of us have just,

00:11:19.900 when we see a steak at the grocery store, at Walmart, we don't necessarily think about where that

00:11:26.100 came from. We just have this feeling of like, Oh, that's there and should always be there. And

00:11:31.120 you know, for us, when, when COVID started to kind of show some of the early, you know,

00:11:36.260 just the cracks in the U S food system as a whole, I think people started to kind of see

00:11:40.900 that complacency for the first time. And in that there isn't this guarantee that that's always

00:11:47.800 going to be there. And there's people behind producing that and there's quality and care that

00:11:51.540 goes into doing that. Um, and, and I think there is very much this drive now from a customer

00:11:58.520 perspective to get better insight to the products that they're buying and consuming. And that's

00:12:04.720 something that we've really focused on. And it's something that we've like truly is fundamental to

00:12:09.500 our business. And that was where we started with it was, you know, the quality and care that goes in

00:12:14.540 these animals throughout that entire process. And being that we, so something that's a little bit

00:12:19.140 different about our program and our beef program in particular, is that we literally do a hundred

00:12:24.820 percent start to finish Montana beef within our own vertically integrated supply chain. So,

00:12:29.540 you know, what that means is from the genetics to calves hitting the ground to yearlings, which would

00:12:35.960 kind of be your like midsize cattle to finishing cattle to the processing and distribution. We do all

00:12:43.220 of that within our business model. And I think the biggest thing in the biggest value that we can offer

00:12:48.640 our customers is that we provide quality assurance through every one of those phases that typically

00:12:54.560 in cattle, you know, are, are different companies, different people doing those different phases.

00:13:00.400 And so I could do a, you know, a terrible job and sell it to you. And then you do a great job. And

00:13:05.440 then you sell it to somebody else who does a terrible job. It's very hard to track that animal throughout

00:13:09.440 that entire process. And what we wanted to do, um, and, and, you know, we really wanted to,

00:13:16.180 number one, we wanted to decrease kind of the, the, the footprint that those cattle have to travel.

00:13:21.960 Montana is very much a cow calf producing state, but typically those calves get sold in the fall.

00:13:28.320 They go to, um, you know, the Midwest, they'll get grown there. They'll go to a feed yard in Kansas.

00:13:34.280 They get bought and processed and distributed nationwide. But every time those, those, that

00:13:39.800 ownership changes hands, you kind of lose, you know, that, that, um, that history of that animal of,

00:13:46.940 of where it came from and how it was managed at that time. So what we really wanted to do was kind

00:13:52.280 of put all that back together. So we knew exactly where those cattle were coming from, how they were

00:13:57.140 treated from the beginning to the end, but it also allows us to adjust our program for quality and

00:14:03.100 consistency over time.

00:14:05.160 I think that's the biggest thing because with all due respect, I don't know how much consumers are

00:14:09.740 interested in the history of the, the, the meat they're eating, like where it came from and where it

00:14:14.020 was supplied from. I really, I don't, I could be wrong. I think they're more interested in, I need

00:14:19.260 to know that this is high quality B for food that we're eating because I mean, you can go to Walmart

00:14:24.840 for example, or any grocery store and you can look at the meat and you can see if you didn't knew

00:14:30.600 nothing else about it, you can actually tell that that is an inferior cut to something that you just

00:14:36.400 pulled off the hind quarter of a deer you shot an hour earlier. I don't know exactly what it is,

00:14:42.480 if it's the color of it. Cause you see like some of this meat you walk into the store, it just looks

00:14:46.300 like flabby and gross and flimsy and even brown a little bit. But then when you shoot an animal

00:14:52.140 or you have something that has a very direct path, like you're talking about here, like you can see

00:14:58.800 it, the richness of the color of the meat, the how, like the, the consistency of it, the texture of

00:15:04.420 it, it's, it's different. And I don't know all the data and science behind it, but you did say

00:15:08.720 something interesting. You talking about genetics, like have you noticed or done much research or,

00:15:14.420 or dived into, uh, what, what meat, and I'm not talking about with what you guys do, but just in

00:15:21.660 general, like, like what has happened to the quality of the food that we've been eating over,

00:15:26.080 let's say the last hundred years. Yeah. And it depends on, um, um, what food groups you're

00:15:35.040 talking about. I will say in cattle, I think it's, it's ultimately improved. Um, when you start to

00:15:40.440 look at just the genetics and the, the technology that kind of goes into that. Um, so for, for,

00:15:48.140 and there's whole degrees behind all this stuff. So I'm certainly not an expert, um, on, on all of

00:15:55.960 it, but I'll tell you what my thoughts are on it from what we do. Um, and we work with a lot of

00:16:00.520 experts specifically in all these spaces, uh, for cattle to really perform well on the, as far as

00:16:08.280 the meat side goes, they really need two things. They have to have the genetic capacity to reach,

00:16:13.340 you know, different quality points, depending on what you're shooting for. For us, um, we're

00:16:17.960 shooting for choice and prime. So we have to have cattle that have the genetic capacity to be able

00:16:22.100 to make choice and prime beef. And they have to be on a food slash nutrition feed program that gives

00:16:29.300 them what they need on the feed nutrition side to, to basically pair with the genetics to get to that

00:16:36.140 level. Yeah. Because just from a, if I can interject here, just from like a layman's term, you know,

00:16:42.120 I, I spent some time with a friend of mine, Josh Smith in Montana, actually French town, Montana with

00:16:47.400 Montana knife company. And he was getting feed for some cattle. We, we drove into, it might've been

00:16:53.020 Missoula or something. I can't remember where we went. We went to the feed store and the guy was

00:16:57.200 talking about it and he was talking about how low the quality, the quality of feed has diminished

00:17:03.200 for the same cost. You're not getting nearly the same nutrients and density in the food that the

00:17:08.820 cattle are eating that you were even 20 years ago. And obviously that's going to affect the,

00:17:15.300 like you're saying, the genetic capacity and the ability for that, that cow to produce

00:17:20.360 really high quality. Like you said, what'd you say? Choice in prime cuts for, for the consumer.

00:17:27.900 Yeah, absolutely. And Josh is a super good guy. I know Josh, um, their knives are incredible. That

00:17:34.160 is like pretty much all we use, uh, from my time in the Navy where we had kind of access to like,

00:17:39.860 you know, great knives. Um, I'm telling you like that Blackfoot 2.0 is like my everyday at the ranch,

00:17:47.340 use it for everything. And, you know, to their culinary knives, the knives Montana knife company

00:17:52.640 makes are unbelievable. And Josh is such a great guy and seeing what he's built here in Montana,

00:17:57.420 um, kind of around the same time that, that we were building and growing, um, just another great

00:18:01.920 company, but you're right. So in what happens is, so for us, um, when we're feeding and finishing

00:18:08.100 those cattle, um, at our feed yard operation that we have, you know, we're buying commodities on a

00:18:14.200 regular basis. And what happens is you have different ingredients that, that basically make

00:18:19.380 up the recipe that those cattle get fed to hit, you know, a performance goal. And we work with

00:18:25.560 some of the best nutritionists, our feed yard manager has been doing it for 50 years. And what

00:18:30.220 I've really learned is, you know, there's this mix between kind of art and science, um, that these

00:18:37.180 folks have been doing this for a really long time, but ultimately what you're, you know, no different

00:18:42.300 than, than any living thing, right. The quality of the feed or food that, that you're taking in

00:18:48.220 has a major output on how you perform or how you do as a whole. And, you know, I think,

00:18:55.080 I think some of that stuff, you know, there, there's, there's been a decrease just in the way that,

00:19:01.520 um, you know, where and how that, that feed is, is now produced. Um, but I will say this,

00:19:08.840 you know, I still think that there's a, I think from a cattle perspective, I think there's actually

00:19:14.400 probably been an increase in like the overall quality size care, um, over probably, you know,

00:19:22.180 the last, oh, you know, 20 to 30 years. And you're really seeing cattle that have the genetic

00:19:29.960 capacity to hit those, those upper quality points or rail performance, as we would call it. And as,

00:19:35.400 as, as it relates to beef, um, in a shorter amount of time, you know, so you can feed them for,

00:19:41.060 you know, X amount of days less still hit that size and quality that we're looking for. Um,

00:19:48.160 but I do think, you know, when you have these introductions now of like these fake meat products,

00:19:52.300 um, and these, you know, these different like, like meat alternatives, when you really start to

00:19:57.920 look at some of those and in that, that ground, that acreage has now kind of come out of what I would

00:20:03.800 call more your high quality food or feed production, depending on what it's going into.

00:20:09.560 I think that's having an impact because, you know, there's, there's just less of it. It costs

00:20:14.580 more to make it. Um, you know, you'll see those, those input costs go up, but those don't always

00:20:21.040 correlate with beef prices. So as a producer and as a cattle feeder, you know, for instance, in 2021,

00:20:27.100 you know, the cost of feed and produce cattle went up substantially based on the cost of that feed.

00:20:33.340 And a lot of that came down to just to how much was in the system.

00:20:37.900 Yeah. I mean, it's just essentially it's supply and demand, right? It's, I mean,

00:20:41.540 that's really what it comes down to. When you talk about the genetic quality, are you talking about

00:20:45.740 through breeding alone? Are you talking about through, you have GMOs, right? So those are genetically

00:20:51.400 engineered. So that's not just breeding, but that's actually modifying them through

00:20:55.540 injections, drug use essentially. And so you're injecting that into this, these cattle. And then

00:21:01.760 obviously we're, we're, we as humans are consuming that. Yeah. I've never seen any of the GMO stuff

00:21:06.920 as it relates on the live side, but there's a ton of GMO on the, on the farming side. So let's say

00:21:12.660 you're buying corn, um, that you're, that's going into feed. There's, I don't know what the percentage

00:21:18.020 is, but there's a high percentage now of GMO corn, right? That's being grown versus non GMO.

00:21:24.300 So just within that supply. So if you're buying, you know, for our feed yard, I mean, we're literally

00:21:29.160 buying semi loads of corn, you know, on a daily weekly basis. And so the amount of corn that's

00:21:35.300 out there that is GMO, non GMO, um, it'd be interesting to look up like what the difference

00:21:41.820 is now, but that shift towards GMO on the farming side, not the ranching side. Yeah. And so for us,

00:21:49.320 when I say genetics, what I'm really talking about is the live cattle side genetics, where

00:21:54.020 if you look at, you know, from a female side and a male side, you know, your cows and your bulls,

00:22:00.220 um, you know, probably the easiest way to look at it. If you said, you know, I want to make a,

00:22:06.160 you know, uh, NBA basketball player, right. I'm five, seven, 160 pounds. I probably wouldn't be a

00:22:13.180 great sire group to make an NBA basketball player. Right. And, and, but if you took somebody,

00:22:19.480 if you took on the female side, somebody that was a fantastic basketball or basketball player,

00:22:24.120 you know, the right height, you know, the right skillset, you paired them up on the, on the sire

00:22:29.400 side, you know, the, the probability of their offspring hitting those performance goals is going

00:22:35.000 to be pretty high. And you can do all that now through all these different numbers that,

00:22:38.940 that looks at the genetic lines of your females, which, you know, the, the ranch typically owns

00:22:44.980 all the females. And then what we do is we buy bulls, um, you know, typically on an annual basis

00:22:51.100 that we'll have in the herd for a certain amount of time. And the genetics that those bulls combine

00:22:56.200 with the females. And if you think about cattle, which, you know, it's kind of interesting is

00:23:00.980 there's a female side of the performance as well. And then there's a, uh, the bull side,

00:23:07.400 which typically you would, you could buy bulls that, you know, their, their genetic capacity

00:23:14.160 for very high quality, high performance beef, you know, is one thing, but that potentially

00:23:19.420 then could detract from like the female side. So you're always trying to pair that up to where

00:23:24.700 you have, you know, females that have like what you would call maternal instincts. So their ability

00:23:29.520 to produce calves, raise calves, um, and do that year over year. And then you have this,

00:23:36.040 this bull performance side that, you know, is going to be 50, 50, but also when we look at buying

00:23:43.140 bulls in particular, you know, we're always kind of weighing this, this, you know, what are the,

00:23:48.460 the kind of the female qualities that are going into it and what is the more of the beef performance

00:23:52.840 side that's going into it. And so that combination is what allows you to, you know, to run a cow herd

00:24:00.080 that is, is, you know, producing the, the type of cattle that are number one, going to be able to,

00:24:07.080 on the female side, go back into reproduction and on the male side, go into the beef side of the house

00:24:12.340 and perform very well. And over time, you know, you can really kind of dial that in. Um, and for us,

00:24:19.360 you know, when I say like, we are a hundred percent Montana, we literally buy bulls from Montana seed

00:24:24.800 stock producers that, you know, we're utilizing genetics that have been produced here in this

00:24:29.900 state and that's going back into our cow herd. So not only are we doing like start to finish from

00:24:34.060 our cattle, but really, truly our genetics are also coming out of Montana as well. Um, and,

00:24:40.020 and that's pretty fun because, you know, even a lot of producers that have been doing it for a hundred

00:24:44.080 years, typically may never see, you know, how those cattle actually perform, you know, as a,

00:24:50.200 you know, on the final stages of beef production. And so it's really interesting to, to, you know,

00:24:54.860 kind of give some of that feedback back to those producers. And, um, but it's really interesting.

00:24:59.860 And when you start looking at all these genetics and things, you realize there's such a key component,

00:25:05.260 you know, like I was saying, they've got to have the genetic capacity to get to that level of

00:25:11.680 performance. Otherwise, you know, it's like you can shine a shoe as long as you want and it might not

00:25:16.820 ever get there. And so you could feed them perfectly and they might not get there or they

00:25:22.100 could have great genetics and you don't feed them the right nutrition program and they might not get

00:25:26.660 there. So it's this very much combination. Um, and it's hard. It's really hard because you don't know,

00:25:32.720 honestly, until they're hanging on the rail, how you're doing. And those decisions typically take

00:25:39.060 like 24 months. Like if I buy bowls today, I won't see the outcome of that decision for,

00:25:44.820 for 24 months and then, yeah. And so in this day and age, we're like, everybody's so used to like

00:25:50.640 immediate responses, immediate feedback. Um, there's a lot of patience that goes into it because

00:25:56.180 it might look like it's working on the live side. And then you, you know, you kill a semi load and you

00:26:02.140 get the performance data back and you go, Oh, like that one didn't go so well. So why didn't it go so

00:26:07.460 well? And then you go back through your whole process. And that's what we're able to do because

00:26:12.120 we're tracking all of that stuff, literally from the genetics all the way through.

00:26:17.400 I mean, it's really a four year process because if you have, you have, uh, two years from the time

00:26:24.320 you, you have that calf, for example, till the time it gets to butchering, you measure the performance

00:26:29.980 and let's say it's producing well, or it's not, you make adjustments, but then you're another two

00:26:34.800 years out before you see if the adjustments worked. Yeah, absolutely. So when we started a little

00:26:40.220 about cattle company in 2020, um, so we're a first generation, uh, working cattle ranch based

00:26:46.080 businesses, but I like to tell people. And, um, when we started that project, we put a couple places

00:26:53.300 that were, were one of them was still in agriculture, two of them weren't. So we put those back into

00:26:58.280 agriculture and we knew we, we really wouldn't see a return at any capacity for close to 24 months

00:27:06.880 because we, we, you know, we got our cow herd started. Those cows had to have calves. We had

00:27:12.020 to raise those calves to a certain timeframe. And so you're putting it super capital intensive as

00:27:17.100 you're getting going, just because I'm sure the return on that investment is, is pretty far down

00:27:22.660 the road. And so you've got to be really committed to, you know, to kind of the runway length that it

00:27:28.020 takes to, to get off the ground. Um, you know, and that was something that, you know, just the timing

00:27:35.140 of it. But like you said, the, you know, from when you make a decision to when you see the results of

00:27:40.720 that decision is it's years and you really have to do, there's so much work that goes into the,

00:27:50.440 just the organization of like, what was the decision at that time and tracking all this stuff so that you

00:27:55.160 can go back through and not only identify what went poorly, but also what went well so that you

00:28:00.120 can keep doing that. But this is interesting because I just assumed, and I don't have any

00:28:05.060 knowledge on this, but I just assumed that each ranch producing ranch would have their, their cows

00:28:11.040 and then their bulls all together. Are you saying that there's some ranches that just have bulls,

00:28:16.240 for example, and then you as a mostly, uh, I guess female cattle ranch, I guess you'd say,

00:28:24.420 do you then buy the breeding rights for a period of time for those bulls? Is that how it works?

00:28:30.580 Yeah. Great question. And, and so again, this is all part of like, I think this like kind of

00:28:34.220 customer education, because if you're not in ranching and I didn't come from a ranching background,

00:28:39.160 um, something I always had a lot of interest in when I got out of the Navy, um, I was kind of looking

00:28:44.060 for what I was going to do next. And so these are all questions that I had. And I love, you know,

00:28:48.620 kind of walking through with people because it was just something I found fascinating,

00:28:51.680 the more I learned about it. And if you don't come from it, there's not a lot of places out there

00:28:55.920 to where that information is. So basically you have typically, and I'm just going to call your,

00:29:02.680 your kind of traditional ranch style operations. You would have what's called a seed stock

00:29:06.840 producer or registered producer. And what those folks do is they typically produce breeding class

00:29:13.380 animals for the other side, which would be called a commercial operation. That's what we would be.

00:29:19.160 So as a seed stock slash registered, um, operation, you're literally tracking what female you bred with

00:29:27.860 what male, what is their, you know, you know, basically, um, what does their family tree look

00:29:35.260 like and which animal was produced by them. And then all of those animals have different performance,

00:29:42.400 you know, traits that they track through genetics. And again, there's a female side and there's this

00:29:48.160 male side. And so on these registered seed stock producers, you would have folks that all they do

00:29:54.380 is, is produce, you know, animals that are going to go basically into their own herds and or other

00:30:01.420 people's herds. So on the bull side, which is probably the easiest, um, to look at. So, you know,

00:30:07.140 you can look at, we work with a number of great bull producers, Sits Angus, the Vermillion Ranch,

00:30:11.980 Stevenson Angus. Some of these folks have been around for a hundred years doing this,

00:30:16.320 and they have a track record of performance that's been traced that long. And so what they'll do is

00:30:21.560 they'll produce these bulls. They'll, they'll down to, you know, this is the family tree on both

00:30:27.000 sides. This bull was produced by, these are the genetic performance traits that that bull has.

00:30:32.620 And then they have a sale typically once or twice a year. And you go to that sale and you start buying

00:30:38.360 bulls for your program based on those performance criteria that you're looking for. And everybody's

00:30:43.780 a little bit different, just depending on what kind of cows you're running. And then you buy those

00:30:48.260 bulls and then they become yours and you own them. Yep, exactly. And they become your, you know,

00:30:55.420 that it, it does two things basically, right? You're introducing new genetics into your cow herd

00:31:01.460 so that you don't have, so for us then as a, as a commercial operation, we have a certain number

00:31:09.000 of females, right? That produce calves each year, the male calves that we produce at branding time

00:31:15.600 get castrated and become steers. So they will not go back into a breeding program because we don't

00:31:22.120 want for our program, um, you know, basically inbreeding or line breeding is what they would

00:31:27.540 call it. And so what we do is all the males we produce literally go into our beef program,

00:31:32.400 but all the females come back into our reproduction side. And every year you have cows that leave the

00:31:38.320 program. And the way you keep your numbers stable is so if I have 10% of my herd leaves because they

00:31:44.360 age out, you know, they, there's a number of performance criteria that the females need to hit.

00:31:49.840 They don't hit that. We would cull those out of the herd and we would replace them with new females.

00:31:55.500 And then you can sell those females to other producers. There's a number of things that you

00:32:00.580 can do with them. But you know, the, the big takeaway there is you have these commercial operators

00:32:05.400 that they don't track the genetics nearly as specifically as a registered, um, or seed stock

00:32:13.940 producer does. And typically that's because you're not selling your cattle as, you know, as,

00:32:20.600 as breeding breeders. Exactly. For other operations, but your typical cow calf guy,

00:32:26.520 if you think about it as a factory, the females are the factory every year. They produce a certain

00:32:31.280 number of calves. There's a certain number of bulls. There's a ratio that everybody's a slightly

00:32:36.000 different. Um, for us, we use one bull per 20 cows. So, you know, you can easily do the math on

00:32:43.040 however many cows you have. That's how many bulls you have. Those bulls get turned out at a very

00:32:47.340 specific time for us. It's July 15th that sets those cows up to calve in April 15th, which would

00:32:53.360 make us like a spring calving operation. A lot of that has to do with the environment when grass grows

00:32:58.860 in. And so there's all these timing things that happen that are really critical within the overall

00:33:04.160 operation. Um, because you know, those cows basically have to produce a calf, you know, they have to have

00:33:10.400 enough time to basically, um, you know, recover and nutritionally get into a place where then

00:33:16.400 they're able to reproduce when those bulls get turned back out. So for us, you know, we start

00:33:21.360 calving April 15th. We typically go to June 15th and we turn our bulls out July 15th. So some of those

00:33:28.200 cows only have about 30 days from having a calf to being able to be rebred. And that would be a performance

00:33:34.500 criteria that we look for where we need those cows to be able to get rebred. That's another kind of

00:33:39.900 critical component to ranching as a whole is what does your conception rates look like? Um, you know,

00:33:47.100 and you want those to be in the upper nineties typically. And then, you know, what is your,

00:33:51.180 how many of those cows that were pregnant, how many of those bring a calf in? Because that typically

00:33:55.960 is your revenue driver, whether you're a calf operator, you know, and then the next phase of

00:34:01.980 operation would be called yearlings. So those same calves and could be bought by somebody else

00:34:07.000 and grown to another size. And then typically they would get bought by, you know, they'd call

00:34:11.840 them like a heavy feeder. And so, you know, you would buy them at a thousand pounds and finish them

00:34:16.420 to 1500. And then they'd be sold typically in, in, in the standard program into kind of the big four

00:34:22.480 that you hear about, um, where they would buy them as a fat cow, they would call that like fat cattle.

00:34:27.280 And then those cattle would go into your processing. Is there, so this is actually,

00:34:33.180 I've got so many, I've taken notes here. This is so interesting to me with the fat cattle. It almost

00:34:38.280 seems like cheating the system a little bit because you have this thousand pound cow, for example.

00:34:44.220 And, and from what I understand, I could be completely wrong. A lot of the times in this

00:34:49.260 extra process of getting them from a thousand to 1500 pounds, they're just fed a bunch of shit

00:34:54.420 just so they can extract a few more dollars when they sell, because it's based on weight,

00:34:59.440 not necessarily quality. Am I understanding that right?

00:35:02.240 You know, not, no, not really. Um, I think there's a big misconception and I think there's

00:35:06.940 been a lot of like negative marketing campaigns against, um, what we would consider to be grain

00:35:14.100 fed. I'm sorry, like a grass fed grain finished. And that grain finished does a couple of things.

00:35:20.300 You know, there's all these misconceptions that like cattle, you know, it's, it's, it's not in

00:35:24.420 their natural food system, which just isn't true. If you had a bunch of grass and you had, you know,

00:35:30.440 grain in, in whether that's corn, whether it's distiller's grain, et cetera, and you had it out

00:35:34.720 there and there's ranches that do this, right. And you just had it out there in bins. They'll eat the

00:35:39.220 grass and they'll also eat the grain, right? They have the capacity to, a ruminant has the ability

00:35:45.300 to process that. And what that does is it, it puts weight on them, but that is actually where

00:35:52.140 you get that like deep muscle marbling that you see in a grain finished product that you don't see

00:35:57.400 in a grass finished product. And so, um, it's not necessarily that they're feeding them a bunch of

00:36:03.140 shit. It's, it's, it's a different style of feeding where those cattle come off the pasture,

00:36:09.780 they go into a feed yard, right? So they're not on these big open grass areas, but they're fed a

00:36:16.140 very specific diet, but a good portion of that diet is still made up of, of, you know, it's a,

00:36:21.940 it's still like grass, hay, alfalfa based diet with this addition of grain that allows them to put that

00:36:28.780 fat on and really allows for that development of marbling. And the amount of time that they spend

00:36:34.980 in the feed yard all goes back to like the size they came in and how they were fed leading up to

00:36:40.940 that. So for us, we typically, we try to put our cattle in the feed yard for like the, the, the,

00:36:46.480 the right amount of time to get them where they need to be, to be finished consistently at a quality

00:36:52.240 standard that we've set for our program. And, and so it's not that they're, they're fed like a bunch

00:37:01.100 of shit. They're actually fed like a more expensive diet, right? It's a very set diet.

00:37:08.480 And, and that we would call it a ration that ration changes as they, you can't just all of a sudden

00:37:15.020 put like all this feed in front of them. There's a workup to that and it's super specific, but that

00:37:22.020 is how you get those cattle. A big portion of grading cattle as choice, prime, select, et cetera,

00:37:28.140 is based on the marbling and the marbling in a specific rib that they look at. It's very hard

00:37:35.320 for grass fed, grass finished cattle to get, you know, to that point without the addition of that

00:37:43.360 grain. And the interesting thing about it though, is, you know, there's been all these things that

00:37:48.220 look at environmental impact, et cetera. So we use regenerative ranching practices at the ranch. We use

00:37:54.180 rotational grazing. Um, we use, you know, we basically have gone away from tilling. We've

00:38:00.060 gone away from fertilizer. So we use the cattle to basically, you know, rotationally graze through

00:38:06.140 the ranch to, to not only eat the grass, but to re-fertilize, re- from the manure. Right. Exactly.

00:38:12.500 Nutrients back into the soil. And, and those cattle fall throughout that entire deal, right?

00:38:17.380 They then go into the feed yard for a very set amount of time. And yes, they're in like closer

00:38:24.080 proximity. Yes. They're fed a specific diet that is grain based, but it actually gets them out of

00:38:30.920 there and into processing quicker. So those cattle are actually like in the system shorter, which

00:38:36.880 actually reduces their overall impact, you know, like environmentally when compared to grass animals,

00:38:43.400 because to get a grass animal to, to 12 to 1300 pounds is, is pretty challenging. Um, and I'm not

00:38:49.640 an expert in grass fed, grass finished, cause we don't do it, but they will not get to it to, in the

00:38:55.500 same timeframe, there's no way to get them to what I would consider to be a finished weight to, to process.

00:39:02.720 And so those cattle have to go, like those cattle, number one, are going to be in that system way

00:39:08.140 longer. And then once you get beyond 30 months of age, there's a whole number of things that like

00:39:14.600 physically start to happen, you know, to those animals just as a whole. Um, and, and, and is a

00:39:21.520 disqualifier for some grading programs within the USDA. Um, and so there's every program has its pros

00:39:30.500 and cons, just like, you know, kind of everything in life, right? I'm not saying grass fed grass finished

00:39:36.300 is bad by any means. There's absolutely a customer base to it. I think they've done a fantastic job of

00:39:41.200 marketing that product, um, in a way that resonates with certain people. There's benefits from that

00:39:48.980 product and there's benefits from grass fed grain finished. There's also a customer base that is

00:39:53.980 extremely accustomed to a grass fed grain finished product. So your restaurants, your high end, um,

00:40:01.280 you know, markets use, there's very, very few restaurants at certain scale that, that do a

00:40:10.600 grass fed grass product because the U S customer expectation at those type of restaurants isn't

00:40:18.960 for that product. And so the customer base that we focused on initially, which was local Bozeman,

00:40:25.400 big sky, Montana markets in restaurants, you know, competing with national level programs are all

00:40:33.480 grass fed grain finished. And that the cattle that we were producing, you know, on the genetic

00:40:38.780 performance side as well was, was more geared to that. But then what we did, which was, I think a

00:40:45.420 little bit different was we looked at all these regenerative practices that a lot of the grass fed

00:40:50.620 grass finished guys were doing. And we're using that, you know, for the first 20 months of those

00:40:55.620 cattle's lives. And then the last, you know, four to five months, they're going on feed to get that

00:41:00.740 finished that puts them into the program for the customer base that we're targeting.

00:41:08.340 All right, man, I'm going to step away from the conversation very quickly. Um, as of the release of

00:41:12.520 this podcast, I am currently in Africa on a hunt and safari with my oldest son. Uh, this is an

00:41:19.640 adventure dream come true for both of us. And it's only possible because I was introduced to hunting

00:41:24.280 only eight years ago. It's about 35 years old. Uh, since then I've hunted Hawaii, Texas, Minnesota,

00:41:31.280 Maine, Utah, Arizona, and now we can add Africa to that list. Now I get a lot of questions about

00:41:38.060 how to start hunting from many of you every single week. And that's why I decided to co-found a company

00:41:43.980 called M42 adventures to introduce men and women to all sorts of outdoor experiences,

00:41:49.440 from hunting in Africa, to surfing in Costa Rica, to horseback riding in the desert of Southern Utah.

00:41:55.200 So if you are ready for an adventure, but you don't know where to start, then you can look no

00:42:00.180 further than M42 adventures, M42 adventures.com. You can find out the dates on our next hunts and see,

00:42:07.360 and not only hunts, but the surfing trip and other experiences that we have available. Again,

00:42:12.140 that's M42 adventures.com. Do that right after the conversation for now, let's get back to it with Greg.

00:42:19.440 It's, it's interesting. I almost wonder now that you're saying this, like when you go to the store

00:42:24.220 and you buy, uh, you know, a sirloin or a steak or something like that, where it will say grass fed,

00:42:30.360 it, I don't know. I could be wrong. I don't think it says grass finished. I think it just says

00:42:36.320 grass fed, which is a little misleading if they're grain finished. And I think they're using that.

00:42:42.760 Yeah. I, that's interesting. So I, I, I have to question now for all everybody, including myself,

00:42:48.540 who's like, Oh, grass feds better. And you get these grass fed labeled meat is not actually 100%

00:42:54.720 grass fed based on what I'm hearing you say. So the marketing again, right. And all this stuff

00:42:59.580 comes down to this like major component. So what you do any research or Googling on the labeling laws

00:43:06.920 in America, um, there's all these interesting things, right? Grass fed could be grass fed pellets

00:43:12.120 in a feed yard or it can be grass on open pasture. Wild grass. Yeah, exactly. So like the parameters

00:43:19.220 of what grass fed grass finish means as it relates to labeling and lesser specific requirements. And

00:43:25.200 there is great programs out there like whole foods has one. Um, there's third party verified

00:43:30.580 programs out there, right. That say like this ranch is doing this and to put those labels on

00:43:36.540 in a, get them approved by the USDA, you have to be able to prove what you're claiming, right?

00:43:41.740 To say grass fed grass finished, you're not proving anything. Right. So that's not actually,

00:43:47.860 it's, it, it's not, people think it's something more than potentially that it is. Right. And there's

00:43:57.040 certain requirements. Like you can't say that you're, you know, like organic means one thing,

00:44:02.020 but it means a very different thing than what a lot of people think it does. Grass fed means

00:44:06.160 something very, very different. You know, like we're grass fed grain finish, right? There's a

00:44:10.420 certain amount of days that they have to be on grass to be considered to be grass finished,

00:44:14.300 but you could be feeding them alfalfa pellets in a, in a feed yard type setting. And they would call

00:44:21.260 that grass fed grass finished, which I don't think most people buying grass fed grass finish have that

00:44:26.880 that's what they're looking for. Exactly. Exactly. Well, and what's, it's interesting too,

00:44:31.480 on the organic side, when I hear that immediately, what I think is this is a pasture fed animal

00:44:38.100 that has not been introduced to a bunch of GMOs and hormones and these sorts of things. That's

00:44:44.500 what I think is the average consumer. Yep. It doesn't mean that if you look up what organic means,

00:44:50.540 so like for us, our, our cattle are hormone free, or I'm sorry, there are no hormones ever.

00:44:56.460 And they're, they're antibiotic free, right? Both of those things have like a specific definition

00:45:02.100 by the USDA to put that on your label, right? And, and there's third party verification of that being

00:45:09.580 accurate, right? If you just say organic, that means something completely different than, than that.

00:45:16.640 But I think the assumption and through marketing is people start thinking like, oh, this is this,

00:45:21.740 right? Or this is that. And, and it's just not. And so you can take, so here's a great one for you,

00:45:29.100 right? And there's a, there's a local company that literally does this. They buy exported beef

00:45:35.240 or re or, or just like boxed beef in the U S they bring it into Montana, but it comes in a box.

00:45:42.060 They've never seen a live cow in, in any of the stuff that they do. They buy boxed beef. They bring

00:45:48.060 it in from another company. They have no idea where it came from. They open it, cut it down into steaks,

00:45:53.620 repackage it and put a Montana made label on it. Oh yeah. See, I hate that stuff.

00:45:59.040 Where does this food, where, where is our import of, of beef primarily coming from?

00:46:05.860 A lot of it's from South America. Um, you know, and, and again, like, so here's an interesting

00:46:10.740 thing. The, you look at a lot of these like big, and again, nothing against them. Um, but you look

00:46:16.260 at like butcher box for instance, right? Huge, amazing company that they built 90% of their grass fed,

00:46:22.200 grass finished product comes from Australia, um, South America. And, and it's imported

00:46:28.880 because they can buy it imported a lot cheaper because there's not the same parameters on those

00:46:34.120 producers as there is in the U S so they can buy it a lot cheaper. They can mark it up and they can

00:46:39.600 make a lot of money on it. Right. But a lot of people don't realize that the cattle that are coming,

00:46:44.140 you know, out of that, especially in the grass fed, grass finished market, a very, very high

00:46:49.120 percentage of those cattle in the U S system right now are imported cattle. And there's all these local

00:46:54.100 producers that are trying their best to make a worker doing a really great job, making a hundred

00:46:58.320 percent Montana beef. That's really hard to compete with these, with these import products

00:47:03.380 because they just aren't under the same parameters that we are. And they can just sell it into that

00:47:09.640 system so much cheaper. And that's why we encourage people all the time. Like, you know, we just went

00:47:14.840 to an online, um, like nationwide distribution with a partner with two partners actually. Um, and

00:47:22.460 we're now able to do like, if somebody orders from the website, it can get right to them. Right.

00:47:26.940 And I tell people all the time, like, uh, a prerequisite for liking little belt cattle

00:47:32.460 company doesn't mean that you have to dislike everybody else. Right. If you're buying from

00:47:37.900 good local producers, that's helping the system as a whole, right? When you're buying from American

00:47:44.380 producers, small producers, and you're buying locally, like you are supporting a local economy

00:47:50.640 in a local supply chain that has far broader impact than most people realize your local trucking,

00:47:57.020 local farmers, right? Like when we look at the impact that little belt cattle company has as a

00:48:01.900 whole on the folks we hire, um, the, you know, the businesses that we work with on, you know, the,

00:48:08.800 the, the restaurants, the markets, et cetera, and all of the benefit that, that, that local supply

00:48:15.380 chain hits. And the interesting part is it takes ranchers, it takes, you know, restauranteurs,

00:48:21.240 it takes chefs, it takes customers to do that. Um, but when you're supporting local agriculture and

00:48:30.080 local production, whatever that means, that could be supporting me, or that could be supporting the

00:48:34.140 guy down the street that, you know, raises a certain number of stairs and, and, you know,

00:48:38.260 and sells them at the farmer's market. You're truly supporting like this American system

00:48:43.060 that we're seeing a ton of agriculture acres leave the system right now. We're seeing the average age

00:48:50.800 of, of producers, both on the, you know, in ag in general, and I might not be a hundred percent on

00:48:56.400 this, but the, the last one I read was 58. A lot of those people don't have a succession plan.

00:49:02.080 You don't see a lot of new people coming into the industry like we did. Um, you see acres leaving it

00:49:08.100 that aren't being put back, you see demand going up, but supply going down. So how as a whole does

00:49:13.700 that system maintain if we're not supporting local, you know, producers and, and there's so

00:49:22.300 many people that are doing it now and that are doing it really well. Um, everybody in, in the way

00:49:27.700 that we do that is through customers voting with their dollar and starting to say, where does this

00:49:32.720 come from? You know, I want to know what this label means. Um, I want, you know, some sort of level

00:49:37.900 of verification and quality assurance that, and I think that's the biggest thing there's programs

00:49:42.840 out there, certified Angus beefs, an unbelievable program. And, and, and it's a label that says we've

00:49:50.520 set standards for the beef that's going to get this label. And when you buy that product, you know,

00:49:56.220 that those cattle met that qualification, right? It makes people feel better about what they're

00:50:02.160 getting. We always highlight what our program looks like for the same type of reason. We want

00:50:08.480 people to say, I know who and where that came from. I know I can pick up the phone. And if Greg answers

00:50:14.460 like, or anybody on our team answers, we can say to you, like, this is exactly what we do and how that

00:50:21.680 beef is produced down, you know, to, to every single level of it. Right. Because that's like the

00:50:28.460 obsession that we put into that part of the quality assurance. Um, and that's something

00:50:34.740 that you don't see on these large national programs that they've lost. So when you're just

00:50:39.300 going to the grocery store and you see this label and you go like, Oh, this, that must mean that I'm

00:50:43.780 going to buy this product. There's really no way in a lot of those programs to actually verify

00:50:50.020 what you're getting. And that's back to this connection point. That's part of the connection

00:50:55.120 that we want people to know, this is what you're getting. And this is where it's coming from. And,

00:51:01.900 you know, for us, like we want people to feel good about the fact that we've, you know, decreased the

00:51:06.760 geographical footprint that those cattle travel. We, you know, we buy local produce that goes into that

00:51:13.140 feed. Those cattle never typically leave 90 miles, you know, from where they started there, you know,

00:51:19.900 the way that they're cared for the, the certifications that all of our employees get,

00:51:24.460 the professionals that work in this industry. Um, we're trying to highlight all of that stuff

00:51:30.520 because all of that has impact on that final product. Look, I want to talk a little bit about

00:51:37.120 the vertical integration you were talking about, because I think there's a little bit more awareness

00:51:41.380 of this and I could be completely wrong, but primarily, if I understand correctly, you have four

00:51:46.280 big processing facilities in the country. You have like Tyson foods, JBL or JBS. I can't remember.

00:51:53.220 JBS. Yeah. And then there's a couple others. I can't recall right off hand. Um, but I think,

00:51:58.600 I think one of the understandings, whether it's accurate or not, is that these, these are owned by,

00:52:04.840 by foreign countries. And I don't know if that's true or not. And so I'd like to hear about that.

00:52:10.720 And then are you using these processing facilities or when you say vertical integration,

00:52:14.960 are you saying that you have your own processing facility that bypasses that altogether?

00:52:20.760 Yeah. Great question. Um, and so anybody can go out there, right. And you can just do a quick

00:52:25.200 Google search on these. So, so, um, uh, so JBS is, is one of the largest producers, Brazilian owned

00:52:34.480 company. Um, and, and you can look up what that company looks like. Right. And then, you know,

00:52:40.040 you had companies that started out as, as American companies and have grown into large corporations,

00:52:45.260 right? There's a reason that that consolidation happened. Right. And that, that would be a whole

00:52:50.060 separate podcast on, on over time. Why did consolidation happen within the cattle industry

00:52:55.720 and a number of under industries over time? Right. Um, so for us, we do not use one of the

00:53:03.120 big four processing. You have to be at a certain size in scale, um, to even, even be there. And,

00:53:10.780 and typically the way those, those plants work is they're buying fat cattle in a national system

00:53:17.600 that are going to those packing plants. They're, they're slaughtering and then packing for certain

00:53:23.080 programs for nationwide distribution. Right. So those cattle are coming from all over the country

00:53:28.180 to fill a certain number that goes through those plants. And all of those companies are very good

00:53:32.940 at doing that. And they have a lot of buying power when you look at the amount of, you know, of,

00:53:38.100 you know, and so for us, um, we started out at like a very small, um, processing facility. What

00:53:45.360 happened was, especially during COVID where people started to see this bottleneck of beef, not getting

00:53:51.900 to the grocery store, like we talked about before. And like people hadn't seen before they, the,

00:53:58.180 the federal government put a lot of money out there, typically through grants into starting

00:54:04.360 these small to midsize processors. Montana is an interesting case. So all these processors started

00:54:09.920 to pop up, but then one thing that processors need is a steady supply chain of cattle coming through

00:54:15.920 there. Right. And so like Montana, like I said before, is more of a cow-calf producing state. And

00:54:22.020 there's a number of reasons why, um, typically the corn belt, you know, in the, in the Midwest

00:54:28.620 is where a lot of cattle grow and get finished because there's a ton of corn. We don't have as

00:54:33.580 much corn in Montana. Yeah. And so there's a reason the system exists in the way that it does.

00:54:38.900 So, um, with that being said, you know, all these smaller plants started to pop up and, and we worked

00:54:46.680 at one of those plants for a while. They did a great job for us. We started out initially, we were,

00:54:50.440 we were processing a couple head at a time, like a half a horse trailer. And then we started to fill

00:54:54.880 a horse trailer and then two, and now we're doing full semi loads, um, you know, multiple times a

00:55:00.040 month. And what would that be a semi load roughly? Well, what, what are we talking about? 35 to 40

00:55:05.180 head, depending on the number of axles in the truck. So that would be a semi load. It's either

00:55:10.040 53,000 pounds or 60,000 pounds, depending on the size of the truck, um, that you're doing. And then

00:55:16.520 typically two semi loads would make like one, some, one semi container load of finished product.

00:55:23.500 If that makes sense. Got it. Yeah, sure. Uh, just to give, give people an idea because you have a

00:55:27.920 once you break it down, debone it, that sort of thing. Yep. Just like an elk or a deer, right? Like

00:55:33.000 you have it laying there as a, as a full carcass, you know, as you break that carcass down, you know,

00:55:38.480 bone, skin, um, organs, head, et cetera, come off of that overall. And then you get these yields

00:55:45.480 that are like critical to the, to the overall performance of your business within beef,

00:55:49.500 because then you go, this is how much I have to sell, you know? And so we're constantly evaluating

00:55:54.120 all of those things. Um, and so for us, we, we moved to what I would call a mid-sized packing plant.

00:56:01.640 Um, it's a, it's a new facility. It focuses on, we would be what was, what's called like a custom

00:56:07.280 kill. So they have number, you know, of different cattle programs like mine that come there,

00:56:13.320 they kill for us. They develop custom cut sheets for our customers and we pay them a fee. We do not

00:56:20.080 own that part of the process, but every time we kill cattle, we send, we have a meat scientist on

00:56:26.900 staff, um, who has a master's in meat scientist and she's fantastic and could, could break down,

00:56:32.080 you know, from, you know, how do you get this marbling? Why, et cetera, down to like, I mean,

00:56:37.960 people have doctorates in, in all of these areas that I'm talking about. And so I'm just hitting

00:56:43.380 like the wave tops. And like I said, I do not have a doctorate in any of this stuff. I've just

00:56:47.300 taken in the information in the way that I need to, but we hire experts. Uh, I do have a question

00:56:53.280 though about this process real quick. So for example, if, if, if, um, a cattle ranch sends

00:56:59.940 their food through Tyson, let's say, just we'll pull that out. Then they Tyson buys the meat and

00:57:05.780 they're selling it themselves. But what I'm hearing you say is you have a processor that

00:57:10.020 processes it and then, and then sends it back to you for distribution. Is that the difference?

00:57:15.920 Correct. There is. So Tyson would actually buy live fat cattle.

00:57:20.300 They just buy it all. Right. They just buy, they come to my feed yard and they go, Greg,

00:57:23.980 I need X amount of, you know, or they were, we feed cattle for them. They get to a certain size,

00:57:29.720 truck shows up, truck gets loaded, goes to their plant, gets processed and then distributed through

00:57:35.200 their distribution channels under, you know, a variety of different brands. Right. Our program

00:57:41.320 is we retain ownership of our cattle all the way through. So once their, their process and labeled

00:57:48.600 little belt cattle company, you know, premium beef, they come back to me and we do our own

00:57:54.660 distribution. So that includes our online partners. Um, we work with a company called crowd cow and we

00:58:00.160 work with a veteran, um, own company, uh, that, that we're doing this, this kind of veteran, um, uh,

00:58:08.340 coalition program that we're running, which is called Casey cattle company. And they're a Wagyu

00:58:12.840 based program. And we provide all their Angus, uh, for them right now. And those are our two online

00:58:18.720 partners. We've got a couple of markets and restaurants that we, we deliver to, um, and distribute

00:58:24.240 to here, uh, statewide in Montana. And so the big difference there is our cattle, we own, we retain

00:58:30.800 ownership, processed, cut, labeled little belt, come back to me. I do distribution. Tyson buys fat cattle

00:58:38.040 from a number of different places, right? They process, they cut package distribute nothing wrong.

00:58:47.040 It's just, they're on a much, I mean, they're killing thousands of cattle a day and we're killing,

00:58:54.060 you know, a truckload every other week. Right. So the scale and volume is just so different. And that's

00:59:01.820 why we're able to have the traceability that we are, but you eventually get to this like size and scale

00:59:11.140 to where it's just not feasible to have like that, you know, that much acreage, that many cattle,

00:59:18.740 you know, it just, that's why it's such a phase line business. And I tell people all the time,

00:59:23.800 right? Like coming out of the military background that I did, you know, they look all the time,

00:59:28.020 how do you get more special forces seals? You know, how do you get that type of soldier? They always

00:59:33.340 want to know how can we get more of those guys quicker? Right. But if you rush to the quantity,

00:59:39.280 you typically sacrifice in the quality. And I think about that a lot as we've built, grown and

00:59:45.400 scale our beef in our cattle program is, you know, you have to be very careful how you grow

00:59:54.200 in quantity and don't sacrifice in quality. And so we, you know, so we say to people all the time,

01:00:00.500 like we have a customer right now and they're like, we'd like to double the POs that we're doing.

01:00:04.300 Like our demand for our product is, is very high and our supply is like where we projected it to be,

01:00:11.160 but we didn't participate or we didn't anticipate. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, which is, you just,

01:00:17.180 that's a good problem to have. It's a great problem to have, but it's a slow problem to fix

01:00:22.380 because you have to start then looking at into next year. So we have to say to like,

01:00:27.780 you know, to a lot of our two years down the road. Yeah. We go, Hey, we can do this,

01:00:32.080 but we can't do it till now. Right. And we can show them on a calendar. Like this is when these

01:00:37.440 cattle will be at this size. We can keep more of our cattle in the system and we can allocate those

01:00:42.520 cattle to you, but very different than like a box beef program. Our live cattle are almost

01:00:47.720 pre-allocated to the customers that they're going with. And we call it the meat puzzle.

01:00:51.960 So, um, there's a gal, uh, who's our director of operations, uh, who is a air force pilot retired

01:00:58.340 and, and works for us. I mean, our business, one thing that we really are focused on is we're

01:01:02.660 committed to hiring veterans and helping more veterans get into, um, agriculture. When I got

01:01:07.740 out of the Navy, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. Started kind of going down this path,

01:01:12.460 never thinking that this was going to be something that was going to be available to me full time.

01:01:17.240 Um, you know, a lot of times you hear, like, if you didn't grow up doing this,

01:01:19.940 there's no entry for you. And, and we through doing it ourselves,

01:01:27.760 my business partner, Tim, she, and I, like, we kind of, there was no blueprint for how to do it.

01:01:32.320 We just started doing it. And we're trying to offer people now like, Hey, this is actually how

01:01:36.920 you can do it. Hey, if you want to go to school, here's programs, here's internships, here's

01:01:40.260 nonprofits. And we hire a lot of veterans as part of our, like in our, you know, mission vision

01:01:47.100 statement, it states in there that we want to have a certain number of veterans as part of our company.

01:01:51.180 Um, because for me and Tim, we saw so many parallels in ag to the military. And although

01:01:59.160 the skill sets are slightly different, kind of the mindset is very much the same. It's very much a

01:02:03.820 task driven, not time driven. And it's a ton of attention to detail. And what we've seen is veterans

01:02:09.160 do very well. And so for an industry that has opportunity, and then a group of people that,

01:02:15.800 you know, a lot of who I, in my opinion, have earned an opportunity, but also need an opportunity,

01:02:20.460 it just pairs up really well. And so we've tried to do a lot of that pairing. Um, you know, so,

01:02:28.760 so as we've looked, you know, as Allison looks at, this is the number of cattle being processed.

01:02:34.940 These are our customers and what cuts they need. We're allocating those full carcasses across a number

01:02:40.760 of different distribution pipelines. And, you know, so as you build, grow and scale,

01:02:46.760 what we found is we try to allocate beef to certain customers, not be selling anymore.

01:02:53.040 Right. There was a time though, where we would kill five head and I'd be out there knocking on

01:02:57.700 doors, trying to sell them. Exactly. Exactly. And, um, and as we've built a reputation and been

01:03:04.420 consistent in our quality, um, but also the size of our cuts, et cetera. Um, we've now built like a

01:03:11.000 very steady customer base that, you know, that now we're just saying, how do we keep them full

01:03:17.460 all the time? And then how do we build that over time? Because it's really easy to get,

01:03:22.800 you know, you see a lot of these programs out there and they have a handful of cattle,

01:03:26.860 they get online, they sell those out, and then they're sold out for a certain amount of time.

01:03:32.040 Right. With our program, it's set up on a monthly basis to where we're processing a certain number

01:03:39.060 of cattle every single month so that we're able not only to keep consistency and quality,

01:03:43.820 but consistency in our supply chain, which is challenging to do. Um, because number one,

01:03:51.240 you either like run out of cattle or your cattle are only allocated for a certain timeframe because,

01:03:56.540 you know, they're all born at the same time. And then how do you stretch that for a certain amount

01:04:01.780 of, you know, beyond that? Let's say they're born in a 60 day window. How do you stretch that beyond,

01:04:07.480 let's say 90 days to make a 12 months supply chain? So we're always looking at like the side,

01:04:13.920 the, it's this very interesting logistical puzzle where you say, I need cattle at this size today

01:04:19.680 to be ready, you know, for processing in March. And that's what I'm looking at right now is where are

01:04:26.880 all of our cattle in that pipeline? What size are they now? Where are they going? And are they going

01:04:32.440 to be ready at the time that I need them so that we don't have these lapses? And that's where these

01:04:37.900 big guys, you know, they're, they're buying nationwide. So they have such big access and they

01:04:44.080 have such big buying power that they're buying nationwide, but what they don't have.

01:04:49.080 Yeah, exactly. But what they don't have is traceability then back to where those cattle

01:04:54.600 like came from. There might be programs that say like, you know, Oh, they're, you know,

01:04:58.840 they're all natural. They're, they're hormone free, et cetera, which is all great. And they do,

01:05:03.420 they do verify that. But if you said, you know, what state did that animal even start in? They have

01:05:10.140 no way of knowing. Right. And even people that are buying regional cattle and, and putting them on

01:05:15.320 feed and putting them into a program or putting them on grass and then putting them on feed.

01:05:21.560 Some of those people know where those cattle coming from, but a lot of them don't. Right. And,

01:05:26.480 and I think a big thing for us is the traceability that we have and have intentionally built into our

01:05:34.220 program. We can look at a pen of steers and say, this is exactly where those came from. Right. And that

01:05:40.920 allows me then to correct course or continue course based on the performance of those animals

01:05:46.340 specifically as it applies to the beef program. Well, Greg, this has been really interesting. I,

01:05:52.640 I didn't know how deep we would get into some of this stuff, but now I'm kind of fascinated. It's

01:05:56.100 almost like a primer on cattle ranching, which I really appreciate. I hope the guys are interested

01:06:00.200 in it because it's a big part of our life. Like we eat this stuff every day. I think we ought to know

01:06:05.520 a little bit about how the production and supply works. Why don't you let the guys know where to

01:06:09.600 connect with you, learn a little bit more about your organization and, uh, how they can, how they

01:06:14.180 can figure it out. Yeah, you bet. Um, so little belt cattle company, um, is our company, um, business

01:06:20.900 partner for a fellow Navy SEAL, um, currently running for Senate in Montana. Tim Sheehy, um, is, uh, and I

01:06:28.860 started it in 2020. Um, you can find us at www.littlebeltcattleco.com. Uh, you can find us on Instagram

01:06:38.020 at littlebeltcattleco. We try to give everybody kind of a realistic look from the ranching side

01:06:43.760 to the feeding cattle side, to the processing, to the distribution. Um, you know, kind of our,

01:06:49.280 our messaging there was what does it take to, to build a cattle and beef company from the grass up?

01:06:54.480 And we try to give people a realistic look. Um, you know, sometimes we look cool. Sometimes we don't,

01:07:01.180 but, uh, we try to let people know kind of, a lot of people are interested in, and, you know,

01:07:06.280 just, again, if you don't, if you didn't grow up doing it, um, and I was in that, that category,

01:07:10.900 it's just, you just don't know that much about it. And, um, and I'll put this out there. If people

01:07:16.040 are interested more in it, it's a super deep topic. Um, I'm happy to come back on if people find it

01:07:20.680 interesting or have further questions they, they want to know more about. But, you know, what I'd leave

01:07:24.860 people with is there's fantastic opportunities right now to support local and U.S. beef producers.

01:07:34.140 There's a number of ways to do that online. Um, there's a number of ways to do that through,

01:07:38.880 you know, farmer's markets, through wherever you live. Um, there's, there's small and mid-sized

01:07:44.260 producers out there that are making great products that fit, you know, whatever you're buying

01:07:49.980 preferences. If that's grass fed, grass finished, great. Find a local person that does that. If it's

01:07:54.720 grass fed, grain finished, you know, find somebody that you trust and you can verify what you're

01:07:59.140 getting, but it's, it's become so easy and so accessible that I would encourage everybody

01:08:05.460 to, you know, to, to look into that further. And I think the connection and the point of

01:08:12.480 pride that you'll have, as you learn more about who and where that comes from and what

01:08:17.060 it truly takes to put great nutrient dense, high quality protein on, you know, the plates

01:08:23.140 of Americans, um, is, is easier and easier to do. Um, we certainly appreciate if you, uh,

01:08:31.380 like what we're doing and, and, and support us, you can find us at CrowdCal, um, as well

01:08:36.180 as, um, Casey Cattle Company. And those are both online distributions. If you're in Montana,

01:08:41.340 we're in a bunch of restaurants in markets in Bozeman and Big Sky, and then throughout the

01:08:46.260 state. Um, but yeah, some, I apologize to you because some of these, they're never like

01:08:50.900 yes or no answers and they're just, they go really, um, you know, deep, but if people

01:08:56.520 have more questions, they can, they can ping us, uh, on any of those places. They can shoot

01:09:00.620 us an email. We love talking about how we do, you know, what we do and why we think it's

01:09:08.040 important. And I will leave you with this agriculture in America as a foundation. I tell people all

01:09:15.400 the time, you know, um, the military provides national security and agriculture provides food

01:09:21.660 security. Well, food security is national security. And one of the huge positive impacts,

01:09:28.940 you know, of, of being a U S citizen is the access that we have to high quality nutrient dense

01:09:35.560 food. And that system is critical to like the future success of this country. And as you see

01:09:48.020 acres coming out of the system, as you see producers coming out of the system, we have to protect that

01:09:55.080 system because it is a critical system that we all rely upon. And the people that do that on a day

01:10:02.100 in day out basis provide, you know, it's such a massive, you know, uh, necessary product that I

01:10:14.720 think we've all got a little bit complacent to myself included. And as you see what it takes to

01:10:21.100 do that in, in the input cost and out and just the time and the effort in the care that producers put

01:10:27.500 in both on the ag side and on, you know, the ranching livestock production side. Um, but I

01:10:33.140 encourage everybody to support us producers because it does support this country and it supports

01:10:40.540 critical, you know, uh, infrastructure and the defense of this country. So I'll leave you with

01:10:48.880 that. Awesome. Well, we'll sync everything up. So the guys know where to go. I didn't know Tim. Uh,

01:10:53.420 well, I don't know Tim, but I only saw a clip of him cause you said his name. And I saw a clip where

01:10:58.300 he said, uh, Tim, she, he, those are also my pronouns or something like that. I caught that.

01:11:03.420 So I didn't put that together until you just said that. So very cool. Yeah. He loves, that's his,

01:11:07.780 uh, one of his, his go-to jokes, but yeah, he spoke at the, um, Republican national convention,

01:11:13.320 national convention. And I'll just say like, we don't care, um, you know, what side of the aisle

01:11:17.040 people are on. Um, but that's something that, you know, that Tim's passionate about and,

01:11:21.740 you know, and, you know, it's really interesting and folks that live in Montana have seen this,

01:11:26.040 you know, the, the negative, um, uh, attacks that we've gotten as a first generation,

01:11:34.060 you know, veteran owned and operated startup ranch. It's, it's been, it's been really interesting

01:11:40.900 because they've, you know, attacked him personally. They've attacked our business. Um, and in, in part

01:11:48.580 of that it's, it's, it's to try to, you know, you know, basically make fun of us because we're new

01:11:53.340 and here we are trying our best to keep ag acres in ag, hire veterans, rural entrepreneurs, all the

01:12:01.540 things that, you know, in this state, um, that the person that Tim's running against claims that he

01:12:06.260 stands for, and then they come out and attack us on a regular basis, attacked him personally. Um,

01:12:12.020 and it, it really shows, uh, just the, just that system as a whole, but, um, yeah, it is. But Tim

01:12:22.980 is, he's doing a great job. Um, he cares about this country. I told Tim, you know, as a buddy,

01:12:28.460 I don't think you should do it. And as an American, I sure hope you do. And I'm really proud of him.

01:12:33.860 I'm proud of the way that he's standing up to that. I'm proud of our business. I'm proud of what

01:12:38.300 we stand for. Um, and like I said, we stand for America. We stand for the American dream.

01:12:42.660 We don't care what side of the aisle you're on, but you can't say that you stand for the American

01:12:47.580 dream and then say that, you know, certain places are closed off to certain people, right? I believe

01:12:55.160 in, you know, Americans can do anything anywhere from any background. And I fall into that in

01:13:00.880 agriculture. This is something I was passionate about. I put the time and the effort and Tim and I

01:13:05.320 worked really hard at to get knowledgeable and to build our skillset and to build our business.

01:13:09.940 And, you know, ultimately to say that our business somehow, you know, isn't as, um,

01:13:21.260 uh, legitimate as somebody else, because it wasn't a multi-generational thing that was passed down

01:13:27.380 or, or that we were born into basically is saying that the American dream,

01:13:32.200 according to them is not alive and well. And both Tim and I military veterans fought for this country

01:13:39.880 and then came back are proof that the American dream is alive and well. And I don't care what

01:13:46.000 it is that you want to do. Don't ever let anybody tell you it's not for you. If you work hard at

01:13:51.500 something, you get good at it. You have the right attitude. I mean, when I went into seal teams,

01:13:56.240 the number of people that were not Navy seals that told me that'll never work. You're never going to

01:14:00.740 make it. Everybody quit. You know, it's a lot of that comes from the fact that they never did it

01:14:08.480 themselves. Right. When we said we were going to start doing this, we got the same, more people

01:14:13.440 probably told us that this was a bad idea than, you know, becoming Navy seals. And that attitude

01:14:19.900 has to change because we need more good people coming into all these industries. We need great

01:14:25.700 Americans, you know, starting businesses. And, and that is the backbone of this. And I said,

01:14:32.320 I would leave you with buy local and buy from Americans, but I'll leave you with this. Don't

01:14:36.600 ever let anybody deter you from doing those things you want to do, because that is part. I don't care

01:14:42.060 where you're from, what you want to do, what your background is. If you work hard at it, it's,

01:14:47.180 it's available out there. And the fact that that's the messaging that they're putting out

01:14:52.020 and coming at basically at us with is something that, you know, I just think says a lot about

01:14:58.780 the, the state of, you know, of how they want things to be. And unfortunately there's good

01:15:05.860 people out there that aren't going to let that happen. And I hope that we're a good example of,

01:15:09.400 of folks that are trying their best. Josh Smith's a great example. You know, all these guys that are

01:15:14.160 starting companies, they're doing it from the ground up. They're working super hard. Um, and they're

01:15:19.260 showing that it's possible. Well, I love the message, brother. Happy to support you. And

01:15:23.300 thanks for joining me today. Thanks a lot. Greatly appreciate it, man. There you go. What an

01:15:30.200 interesting conversation. Uh, I was curious about how this one would go, but I was intrigued. It's

01:15:34.580 like a bit of a primer on cattle ranching. There's so much that goes into it that I was unaware of,

01:15:40.300 but I hope that gets you thinking. Um, I'm a big proponent of supporting American companies like

01:15:45.620 Little Belt Cattle Company, Montana Knife Company, um, Origins, Soar and X, all the companies that

01:15:50.700 you've heard me talk about. And so I'm glad to be adding, uh, another organization to the list.

01:15:56.220 Uh, anyways, with that said, guys, make sure you check out what Greg and Tim are doing with

01:16:00.460 Little Belt Cattle Company. Uh, make sure you check out M42 Adventures, and then also check out

01:16:06.200 Montana Knife Company. Uh, we will be back tomorrow until then go out there, take action

01:16:11.720 and become the man you are meant to be.

Order of Man - August 06, 2024

Re-Thinking the American Beef Supply with Greg Putnam

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