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New kids on the block: Iowa beef co-op sees strategic partnership as best way to break into highly competitive retail beef market.

Article Excerpt
When you're the new kid on the block--and it's a pretty rough neighborhood--you have to grow up quickly. The Iowa Quality Beef Supply Cooperative (Iowa Quality Beef) is attempting to do just that in a business that co-op President and CEO Joel Brinkmeyer describes as "cut throat." He sees the co-op as the best vehicle for keeping a large number of Iowa family farmers active in beef production during a time of tremendous concentration in the meat industry.

There is little room for error if the co-op is to succeed. But so far the pieces seem to be falling together for the co-op of 875 beef producers, which is set to begin processing beef at a newly retrofitted plant in Tama, Iowa, this summer.

"We want to provide our members with ongoing market access that pays them a competitive price and rewards producers for high quality, consistency and for a safe product that meets our customers' needs, including the opportunity to brand or private-label our products," says Brinkmeyer.

Speaking at USDA's Agricultural Outlook Conference in February, Brinkmeyer thanked USDA Rural Development for assisting the cooperative with a Value-Added Market Development Grant, saying that were it not for that help, "we would not have gotten to the level we are at today." The Iowa Cattlemen's Association, of which Brinkmeyer has served as executive vice president for the past 17 years, got the ball rolling for the co-op in 1999, leading to incorporation last August.

Adding more value at home

Iowa was the nation's sixth leading state for beef production in 2002, with 2.3 million head marketed. But 70 percent of the cattle are shipped to out-of-state packers and processors.

"We want to capture a larger share of the packing industry for Iowa to help maintain the state's independent, family farm operations, to the largest extent possible," Brinkmeyer says. Nearly 45 percent, or 34,000 Iowa family farms, are in the beef business, be it with seed-stock, cow-calf or cattle-feeding operations. Family farms are raising beef in all 99 Iowa counties, and the co-op has members in 96 of them, as well as in Illinois, Minnesota and 9 other states.

While co-op leaders have a strong vision of what they want to accomplish, they could find no exact model to follow. However, Brinkmeyer said Iowa Quality Beef has tried to...

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