The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Nova Scotians buying local beef
The fourth and sixth generation of Greenos to share a piece of earth in Cumberland County have also been sharing a tractor cab for the past month.
Lexi, 2, buckled into the New Holland’s trainer seat, watches her grandfather, Peter Greeno, shuttle bales to hungry cows each morning.
“When I was her age, maybe a little older, there were 15 farms here, now there’s three of us left,” said Greeno of Lorneville.
“It’s like I’m seeing things come full circle.”
By full circle, Greeno means that since the onset of COVID-19 large numbers of Nova Scotians have returned to an old habit — buying local meat.
“It’s gone crazy,” said Jason Dickie of Dickie’s Meats in West Leicester, Cumberland County.
“If it weren’t for our staff, we’d never be able to keep up with it. We’ve got the hardest working staff in the province just trying to keep up with the demand.”
The trend holds up largely across the province.
“Pretty much everybody, whether local processors or direct marketing farmers, demand is up the last three to five weeks,” said Brad Mccallum, managing director of the Nova Scotia Cattle Producers.
“Though some of the bigger folks who are into wholesale have seen a downward trend on the restaurant side.”
We’re past the initial round of panic buying that sucked up the toilet paper from our grocery stores and created an endless stream of memes.
“Now it’s value buying,” said Nathan Greeno, father to Lexi.
He’s been making deliveries to doorsteps in exchange for e-transfers.
People want stew meats, roasts and other lower cost cuts, as opposed to T-bones.
At Dickie’s Meats, a provincially licensed abattoir and meat cutter, they’re seeing similar behaviour. They can’t keep up with the demand for the 50-pound boxes of boneless beef that gets ground into hamburger at stores.
Next to that are the $150 boxes holding a mixture of beef cuts, bacon, pork chops
and chicken breasts.
With so many out of work, people have less money and more time to cook.
Nathan Greeno thinks that in this time of widespread fear people feel more comfortable buying food from those who produce it.
“There's only been one set of hands on our beef,” said Greeno.
Nova Scotia imports 96 per cent of the beef it consumes.
The vast majority of its cattle farms are cow-calf operations — they raise calves for about 14 months until they're 600-700 pounds and then sell most of their herd to feedlots for finishing.
Those feedlots are located primarily in Prince Edward Island, central and western Canada.
Nathan and Peter keep some cows to finish and have slaughtered at Dickie's Meats, then direct sell themselves.
The increased sales actually make for some hard decisions.
By the end of spring it'll be time to sell their calves to a feedlot.
How many do they keep to finish and sell locally?
Whenever we return to some semblance of normalcy, will people continue their new habit of buying local beef?
They've supplied the local market before — from 196076 the farm provided 10 head a week to Goodwin's Grocery in Amherst.
Dickie, too, is wondering what the future holds.
“If we could keep 20 per cent of the new customers that have come on, even that would be great for us,” said Dickie
We are creatures of habit. Among the harms visited on us and our economy by COVID-19 there will likely be some benefits.
For our cattle farmers there's the hope that people will want to know where their meat comes from.
In the meantime, the elder Greeno is enjoying having Lexi as a supervisor each morning.
She and her four-year-old sister, who also likes riding in the tractor, are hoping that there will be Greenos on this land for generations yet.