With Butchers Disappearing, High Schools Look To Step In

Slaughterhouses and butchers used to be scattered throughout the United States, numbering about 10,000 in 1967.

Only about 3,000 remain and about 85 percent of the American meatpacking industry is controlled by four companies: JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Smithfield. The other 20 percent of that market share is held in part by small and very small meat producers scattered across the country, including some in Montana.

About half of small and medium meat processors have disappeared in the last 20 years, and a decades long University of Illinois study found the average length of a meat processing business surviving was 9.7 years. Between inspections, startup costs and other factors, it’s not an easy business to get into or keep afloat.

This is true for much of the agricultural industry, and many small businesses have disappeared as corporate America has exerted its will on farmers and ranchers. About 70 percent of the consumer’s dollar went to cattle producers in 1970, with the other 30 percent going to processors and retailers. Cattle producers now get about 30 percent of the consumer’s dollar, according to Farm Action. Additionally, about 98 percent of America’s beef is processed in just over 50 plants. Beef processing co-ops have been created around the state in an effort to help give beef producers more options, but there’s another problem too — employees. That’s the place some educators in Montana are looking to step in. Fergus High School in Lewistown, for example, has a robust agricultural education program. It’s also part of the Central Montana Career and Technology Education Academy, a public charter school that was set up this year to connect students with skills and knowledge needed to work in agriculture.

‘A dying art’

Logan Turner, one the teachers at Fergus High School, put it pointedly. “Kids aren’t really getting into it,” he said. “Cutting meat is kind of a dying art.” His goal has been, in part, to help change that trend. The technical academy seeks to bridge a gap of agricultural knowledge. Beyond meat cutting, classes at the school include farm business management, fabrication and science classes geared toward teaching about soil health among others. Turner grew up on his family’s farm outside Missoula and quickly decided he wanted to be a teacher. There’s an urgency for him too, with worries, among them a feeling no one knows where their food comes from and the world’s growing population. “We’ve always been faced with this big issue as agriculturalists,” Turner said. “2050 is right around the corner, and there’s going to be two billion more people on the face of the planet, and how are we going to feed them all? I think it all starts with education and understanding … and so I felt like being an educator probably was the best way for me to contribute.” Only about 3 percent of the food Montanans eat is produced in the state. There are options for eating local food, but they can sometimes be hard to find.

Having kids learn about these could also help them enter the workforce with more ideas about what they want to do, which is one of the goals of the program. Orin Johnson, the Central Montana CTE Academy director, said they also want to get students as close as possible to certification in a variety of careers. “Every kid doesn’t learn the same way,” Johnson said. “And some really do strive and need to be hands on, and it’s about finding a way to create opportunities that they can be hands on.”

Students at the school have shown interest and it’s included partnerships with Future Farmers of America and the Montana Farmers Union, which gave the meat processing program two grants totaling about $13,000 over the summer.

“We do a lot of meat processing at my house because my dad loves hunting, and so we do a lot of wild game,” said Shyanne Ricks, a student at the school who’s gone through the program. “And so doing the meats class really helps with seeing the whole process, not just wild game.”

Ricks, along with Tori Rindal, a freshman at the school, and the other Lewistown agricultural education teacher — Jared Long — went to the Montana Farmers Union Annual convention and spoke about the program.

Rindal said she’s hoping to take the meats class next year. Long pointed out agricultural education is broad and students can take many different paths.

The program offers five pathways: welding, natural resource and conservation, meat processing, animal science and agricultural mechanics. There’s a variety of classes within those, both Long and Turner explained.

“The common misconception is that it’s just cows and plows,” Long said. “So that’s really our job, we feel like, is to open doors to kids that they might never have.”