Kathryn Miller

03/22/2022

12/21/2021

Another great attempt at utopia is pictured below.

Let's break down why this is a world of imagination and not real life.

1. Small to medium sized packing houses opening up in every city and town across America.
Let's shop this out. How many cities and towns want a packer? Even a small to medium one? Bozeman, MT didn't. How many cities and towns outside of cattle country want to drop in a packer? How many have the waste management facilities to deal with solid and liquid waste produced by a packer? How many are within driving distance to a rendering facility? What are you going to do with bones and guts and s**t from the pens?

2. Fat cattle are delivered by hometown ranchers.
Hometown ranchers? You mean the cow calf guys whose cash flow models would have to be upended? The guys on annual payments for equipment, land, lines of credit? The local hometown rancher who relies on an annual payment from selling weaned calves. Who is going to tell him or his banker that to make this work, he is going to need to retain ownership through to the packer. Which is on average a 24-30 month cycle. He is going to need to totally upend his entire operation, source feed, make sure he isn't overstocking his land by retaining calves to feed instead of wean and selling, and then focus for the rest of his life on breeding cows, calving, weaning, feeding and finishing, and then marketing them to the local packer? You are asking him to assume 100% of the financial risk for no guaranteed reward. He will need to consider his cows and bulls, will they produce calves that will grow and grade? What if they don't?

What does this do to beef consumption? Sure, the guys in South Dakota and Iowa will be eating great! But without trucking their fats or the beef from them across the country who buys the product in areas where there are more cows than people? Or, what about those of us who might live in areas where feeding out fat steers is a little more complicated. Are we trucking in feed? How do cattle producers outside of the grain belt make feeding pencil out? How are consumers affected in areas where, hate to say it, but cattle don't feed out well? What happens when your favorite steakhouse in the city gets delivered a 5 year old Corrientes ribeye that you could dribble across the restaurant instead of a sub-30 month grain fed angus out of the Midwest? You think a lack increasing the lack of consistency in beef eating experiences will help the beef industry or the pork and chicken industry?

3. Jobs are created. Excuses my while I laugh until I cry and throw up.
How many people you know are going to sign up to be a knocker, a first legger, a bunger, a gutter? How many people in your community are going to sign up to work in 34 degree boning rooms with a knife in their hand doing a repetitive motion all day while standing in steel toe rubber boots on concrete all day? How many people in your friends group will sign up to push carcasses through a cooler? Tyson is starting people at $30/hour and they can't find or keep employees. Churn rate for a packer is 25%. It is hard, long hours in an uncomfortable environment. You're either killing animals all day or cutting them up. This isn't sexy work. It's not glamorous. AND might I add in ag country, how many of your neighbors will whine and complain about the influx of immigrants to your community to fill these positions?

4. Fresh meat is delivered to local restaurants and fast food places.
Clearly, I should stop here. But I won't. Nationally owned fast food chains negotiate in volume with large packers to drive down price. Large packers often run their grinding facilities at breakeven. Fast food places are real estate companies, who mitigate risk by dealing with large, specialized producers who have the means and capabilities of being on the cutting edge of food safety. Fast food establishments 100% of the time require extensive, expensive and time consuming food safety procedures, audits and testing to even be considered as a supplier. To put it in cowboy terms, this is the equivalents of asking every rancher to be set up like Express Ranches. Sounds practical right?

To build on this, 20% of the animal is trim. Ground beef you see at the store is based on blending this lean trim and the fat trim into a ratio that a consumer wants. (80/20, 93/7, etc.) This 20% of the animals weight varies per live animal, and so a ground beef program for a small packer would be heavy fat trim and short lean trim. You'd end up making a fat mush if you just ground everything that came off the carcass.

To keep going, restaurants and retailers use a different mix of products. They are often not capable of breaking down and cutting steaks or further processing in house. In this scenario, you are cutting out food service distributors like Sysco or US Foods, who carry and age inventory for restaurants (which is why your steak is better in fine dining than it is coming off the grocery store shelf.) So you either are going to force the packer or the restaurant to take on aging and holding that working capital in inventory or downgrade the consumer eating experience. How do you think that will affect beef consumption?

I can hear the tiny violins gearing up in the background about dry aging a whole carcass and I'd like to pump the brakes and put that bad idea through the windshield before we even go there. Dry aging the whole carcass will result in a 10-15% yield loss, it is inefficient and expensive and totally and wholly unnecessary to age a whole carcass.

But wait! There is more. So you've manage to sell your middles, your roast, by some stroke of luck even your thin meats get sold---what about the drop? Ah, yes, the elusive drop credit---hide, bones, offal. The real actual margin holder in packers. Small outfits in every city and town, how are they going to merchandize lungs and livers and kidneys and hides? Are they going to buy tripe washes? Are they going to be able to save tripas? Or are these small shops already $120 upside down because they can't save or sell the drop?

5. Without a price increase to the consumer.
So hang with me. We are going to decrease efficiency throughout the industry. We are going to ask ranchers to retain ownership. We are going to input working capital. We are going to open small shops which will pay more for every single thing they utilize from labor to boxes to bags to chemicals to logistics. We are going to greatly reduce the value of the drop. We are going to decrease carcass utilization. We are going to pay ranchers more for their cattle and we are going to these small packers are going to pay more to kill them, but the consumer price will be unaffected?

There is a pretty quick way to evaluate post like this for feasibility. Does it sound too good to be true? Does it sound like it was written by someone in the industry or someone on the outside looking in?

You know how irritated you get when people say cow farts are the cause of global warming? Well, that is how irritated people in the packing sector get when we see cattlemen saying that they could do it better and keep more money for themselves, when let's be honest post like this prove---you don't know what you don't know.

11/04/2021

OSHA released an ETS today requiring private employers with more than 100 employees to follow COVID 19 vaccination and testing guidelines. With the negative press endured by packers during COVID--this is not a mandate to miss.

For any agribusiness that looking for administrative support for compliance, email: kate@doublediamondbrand.com

11/01/2021

I am now offering packer operations and start up consulting. Inclusive of business plan, regulatory (QA/HACCP/SOP), administrative (HR, Accounting, Purchasing) and 3rd party audit support. I will also be offering sales support for national and export opportunities, as well direct to consumer.

Email: kate@doublediamondbrand.com for more information. (Website forthcoming)

10/29/2021

My brother looked at me and said simply, “This is going to hurt.”

There are cattle that make waves through the industry. Through phenotype or genotype they earn their way into the record books and the halls of history.

Our Melinda was certainly not one of them.

Thank you Drovers for helping us remember her.

"I have a sense of certainty that she knew, as that day was the first cold morning of fall, that she had lived out the last of her summers. A chapter in our history closed on that hill on that perfect fall afternoon."

09/07/2021

Yesterday was Labor Day. A day set aside each year that now marks the end of summer, but has it's historical roots in honoring the labor movement during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution began in the late 19th century, when agricultural jobs declined and employment moved to more industrial areas. Trade unions followed to begin to stop the exploitation of the working class by reforming working practices, such as a limit on the length of a work day, the elimination of child labor, the right of labor to organize, a living wage, and the right of the state to regulate labor conditions.

100 or so years before that this quote by one of our most celebrated founding fathers was written. It was the first thing on my timeline this morning. The world in which Washington was an agriculturalist was primarily based on being a wealthy, white, slave owning landowner. During his lifetime Washington owned or leased over 500 slaves, and while his attitude towards slavery changed during the course of his lifetime and he reportedly freed many of his slaves upon his and his wife's death---the fact remains that he was an aristocratic landowner whose version of agriculture was more rooted in estate ownership than running the plow.

This very idea of farming as a noble practice stems from the concept of the wealthy landowning ruling class who exploited everyone beneath their social strata. We do not romanticize the nobility of serfdom and the exploitation of peasant labor. We certainly don't brag about the healthful living of slave labor. The Grapes of Wrath did not glamorize the nobility, usefulness or health of tenant farmers during the Great Depression.

I have long been a critic of the popular "thank a farmer" hero worshipping that our agricultural community propagates. Terms like "agvocate" and "tell your story" flourish in our own social sphere. Does it hurt anything? Probably not. Does anyone pay attention to it? Rarely. Does our 'ing influence consumer trends? Probably not as much as we think.

But what are we saying with meme's like this?

Are we saying that farming is...
..more noble than being a nurse? ..more noble than building someone's home?..more noble than being a teacher?.. more noble than being an attorney?..more noble than operating a funeral home?..more noble than a preacher at a pulpit?

But the world must eat!

Yes, but the world needs doctors and nurses and midwives. The world needs funeral directors and casket makers. The world needs bank tellers and loan officers. The world needs factory workers and research scientist and teachers and professors.

But people cannot be any of those things without us growing their food!

Yes, but without the dozens of other people that touch our products from the farm to the store shelf, where would our harvest land?

Instead of forcing our mission down the throat of our consumers, instead of our marketing tactic being a constant diatribe of telling our target market how great we are, instead of basing our entire industry identity on virtue signaling----why don't we thank the people who give our value to our livelihood?

We can be glad to be farmers and ranchers. We can be thankful that life allowed us to choose this profession. We can market, lobby and protect our industry without being (unwillingly) condescending.

Humility is not telling the world how noble or useful you are.

07/05/2021

Independence Day.

A day marked by fireworks, backyard barbeques, a dip in the lake, time with family and friends.

I was away from home this year, and with my absence came a fair amount of homesickness. Punctuated by this picture from a friend, where the baby boy I remembered has seemingly overnight grown into a man.

To see him here with his momma, born to be on horseback, raised to revel the cowboy life, I am filled with pride for my friend. I can think of no better backdrop to raising a child than a ranch, where this boy will learn from those who came before him to tend to the land and the creatures in his care. He will learn without knowing he is being taught lessons about life in the passenger seat of a farm truck and from a well worn saddle. He will be steeped in wisdom around campfires, squeeze chutes and Sunday morning pews.

He will learn how to be a man by being a child who will grow up believing this work was play.

I often am accused of lobbying heartlessly for big packers to the demise of the rancher. When in actuality nothing could be farther from the truth. My heart belongs in those mountain valleys, with little boys like this one, and I hope to see the vision of his mother fulfilled by him one day being the leader of this ranch.

She has sacrificed countless days and sleepless nights, independently raising this son to be the next in line. I can think of no better way to celebrate Independence Day than having hope for the future renewed through the eyes of a child and celebrating the quiet efforts of the mother in the saddle next to him.

Happy Independence Day to all of those fighting to keep it.

07/02/2021

In remembrance of Maggie.

It’s been a year since they buried you under our favorite oak tree. I think about you daily, but I am humored to think that you chose July 2nd to cross the rainbow bridge to kiss the display of fireworks that sent you growling to the nearest closet.

I still echo the words I wrote for you last year:

I grew up and you grew old, and time does what time does to us both. I hope you knew, as you lay down this afternoon under the shade tree in the backyard, how loved you were. How I still reach for you in the night sometimes. How I still put the bread on the top shelf. How the trash can stays behind a closed door. How I miss the mischief of you.

I’m sorry you were alone today. Oh Mags. I’m so sorry for so much. All the houses with stairs. All the change you endured. That I wasn’t there today to return the comfort and love and protection that you gave, albeit somewhat begrudgingly, to me through our years together.

But I know today you crossed the rainbow bridge on your own terms—-much like you did everything else in your life—in your own time. I hope tonight, wherever dogs spend eternity, you were met with an endless bowl of carbohydrates and a soft couch and a young body and a quick metabolism.

And I hope you wait for me there. So one day, I can sit next you—and feel your paw lightly reach out to make sure I’m still there. And you can be sure of me again.

You were a good girl.

Always.

But you were the best when you were being bad.

And I suppose, that is what we will miss the most.

You’re gone. And I just wasn’t ready. And I wish I could have said goodbye. And hugged your chunky neck and told you one last time how much of a rascal you were.

But they buried you under the old oak tree.
And I promise to visit soon. And speak love over your bones. And I swear, as much as a dog can be loved you were.

03/09/2021

The women who made me have mostly been lost to history.

A few stories remain where generations ago, a woman who made me was waiting at an English port to come to America, while another was scraping together a living in the farthest reaches of the Appalachian wilderness, and another yet was walking out of oppression in the Deep South.

Generations ago, one of the women who made me lost a husband to a coal mine, another was raising a family in a barn during the Great Depression, another divorced an abusive husband after knocking him out cold with a piece of firewood.

Three generations ago, an aunt was drinking tequila on a luxurious vacation in Mexico, while another was sharing a pair of shoes with her sisters.

Two generations ago, the women who made me first went to college giving those who followed the vision for a life beyond their own city limits.

And from these women my mother gave me life and raised me to believe that there was nothing I wasn’t capable of doing.

And surrounded by them and their stories I learned lessons of fearlessness, devotion, loyalty, persistence, charity, resilience, hope, and courage.

They forged the path. They wore pants. They smoked ci******es. They adopted orphans. They raised churches. They went dancing. They lived. Each of them in their own way lived out extraordinary tales of adventure and purpose.

So that I could be.

And I wonder what would they think of this life?

Would they be satisfied knowing the paths they walked led the women that followed them to a place where they could choose? Would they marvel at this independence? Would they mourn? Would they think their struggle and sacrifice was worth the life that came after their own? Or would they wonder where the world went wrong?

Would they see pieces of themselves weaved into the tapestry of my life?

I can’t help but think that they would be equal parts joy and bewilderment. I’d have questions to answer no doubt.

But as I sit and stare at the stars tonight, I can’t help but think that a warmth might pass over their graves at the thought that their great-something granddaughter had the opportunity to be or say or become anything she chose to be. Unlimited by the color of her skin, unlimited by the geography in which she was born. Untethered from expectation or dogma. With the world a click of a button or a plane ticket away.

Free to choose.
Free to wander.
Free to try.
Just free.

I celebrate the women that came before me this Women’s Day. I honor their journey, and I thank them for the sacrifices they made so that I could live out my wildest dreams.

I know not where the road leads, but I hope generations from now the daughters of my daughters will have stories of their own to tell—-from the paths we forged forward for them.

I hope they speak of the same courage and trail blazing fearlessness that I marvel at in my family tree. I hope they know the stories of the women who made them.

And I hope, those stories still matter.
And I hope most of all, that the world is still a place where the women who come after us live our their wildest dreams too.

11/26/2020

One year ago this picture was taken. One year ago and one day later my little life fell absolutely apart.

And today, that is precisely what I am most thankful for.

I crawled into bed on the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year with $25 worth of KFC and Taco Bell. (That is an important detail for no real reason other than humor.) I was settling into watch some trashy television. I had finished cleaning up the house after having family in and out all weekend, laundry was done, cows were worked and my work laptop was beside my bed---in preparation to check any emails that I had come in over the weekend during my television spree.

I finished the tacos and mac and cheese, and during an episode of Hoarder's I popped up my email. My inbox had an unread message from boss, sent at 6:29PM that day. The email read that I was being given a severance, thankfully, but that my employment was ending because they were unhappy with my sales performance and my integration into their team.

After reading the email, I crawled out of bed and onto the floor. I am not entirely sure why, but the duration of that evening I found my soft, warm bed didn't match the cold reality I found myself living within. I laid in the floor and stared at the ceiling. I tried to cry and couldn't.

But as the night drug on, fear began to ring loudly in my ears. Who was I without this job? Where would I go? What would I do? What would become of me?

And the reality sank in that for the first time in my life, I had failed. For the first time in my life, I was unprepared. For the first time in my life, I was truly and deeply scared.

The next day I began preparing for the road ahead. The first thing that had to be done was to sell a house. As I was hauling boxes outside, a woman with Texas plates pulled into my driveway. Her and her husband were relocating to Mena for their retirement, and they had driven by my little house on Church Street on the way to an open house down the road a few days prior. She said she loved my little craftsman cottage.

She asked if I was moving.

Soon, I had a contract for my house and my furniture--slightly above the price I was going to ask. The house, the furniture, all of it—-the weight of the physical and financial reality of my life had been solved and the home I loved so much was going to a couple I knew would treat it with care.

The relief of this transaction allowed me to slide into a productive mourning period. Where I shed the life I had built and alternated between cautious hope and outright terror. I experienced a night where I clung to Ellie and sobbed, and my family packed me into my childhood bedroom and sat outside the door to make sure I was safe. Conversely, I experienced evenings around a campfire with a drink in my hand and friends I had not seen in ages. There was no road map to this experience, there was no organized and structured plan on how to handle the bottom of your universe falling out.

So I ate and I slept and I laughed and I cried. I gained 30lbs and applied for jobs and packed my little life into boxes one by one.

I moved in with my brother and sister. I traded the luxury of owning my own little palace in on a twin sized bed (happily mind you because I wasn't alone), and traded in corporate ladder climbing to teach 7th grade math for a month. (All of my previous math teachers should howl with laughter.) But that month, I was able to rest and recover. I was able to be still and be surrounded by family who held my hand and let me figure things out on my own. I found a routine in going to class and coming home and feeding cows and cooking dinner. I found stability and support and learned to only carry forward the things that really mattered. I learned to relinquish control (as much as someone like me is capable of doing) and I found that each day the fear, while it didn't disappear, became easier to manage.

Then one afternoon, out of the blue, an old friend offered me a job in Oklahoma City.

In February, Ellie and I loaded up and moved into a little house in Oklahoma City. One month later Covid-19 hit in full force. The company that let me go--laid off all the remaining staff. The company I was with retained everyone. While the world started to collapse in food service, I was thankfully sheltered.

Because of Covid, I found my voice here. Because of that voice, I had the opportunity to launch another trading company. Because of that trading company, I walked into a packer in Texas and after a single meeting and a multiple margarita lunch wondered how I had lived my whole life without those people. By the end of June, Ellie and I were living in an apartment in Fort Worth.

This Thanksgiving, I sit at my desk while the hum of a remodel buzzes in the background. There is a prime rib in the oven for the crew, and while this doesn't look like any other Thanksgiving I've ever had---I am overwhelmed with joy.

Joy for the weird journey of 2020.

I spill this story for a purpose: many of you may be struggling today. This year has been brutal for most. Life today is not the same as it was a year ago, for some of us that brings joy---but for many, today is marked by grief.

I just want to say even if you aren't in a season of Thanksgiving today---hang in there. One day the road will make sense. You never know what time can do, and even if the road ahead is scary and uncertain----you never know what lies ahead.

Have hope that better days are coming, and if you cannot yet manage to look to the future with hope---it is enough to just be curious about what Thanksgiving 2021 will look like.

10/13/2020

To start: The date of this product is May 15, 2020. It was packaged a nd labelled in the height of the COVID19 retail crisis. Stop sharing old fake news.

Packers aren't charging $7/lbs for ground beef. Even then.
Full stop. This is a retail label.

Like please let that sink in: PACKERS ARE NOT GETTING $7/LBS FOR GROUND BEEF.

But because the stupidity of this post highlights how out of touch we are with the production pipeline, how about a BEEF lesson.

A 1300lbs animal is bought by the packers at cash market, which right now is $1.08. That is $1404.00 live animal valuation. In reality, the conversation stops here if you are selling in the cash market. You have no skin in the packer game. You sold a commodity into the market. Full stop.

But for transparency:

Hot carcass weight yield is 63%: 819lbs (Guts, blood, head, hide removed)
Chill yield loss 3%: 794 lbs (evaporation loss in the cooling process)
Table yield to the box: 70%: 556 lbs of red meat (removing the bones)

Cut out is $214.06. So hot weight x cut out: $1760
Gross Margin: $356
Cost of production: $220
Net margin in a perfect vacuum: $136/head
Please insert me laughing hysterically here. Might I add that ground beef primarily comes from 90 production, which is cull cows which is a whole different calculation entirely.

Still better than cattlemen. But not this $4841.20 nonsense.

Packers do not control retail pricing. Packers don't own the beef in cold storage. The cut out is strong right now because retailers are putting loads into storage at a rapid rate to prepare for another COVID shut down. Plants are having problems with labor, and though it may not be advertised it is occurring. Retailers will not be caught in the same position as last time, and storage is filling up. This keeps some pressure on demand. This time of year beef is also not a major retail focus---so they don't have to relax their margins. The lift they would see from running a feature doesn't equal the opportunity cost. Simply put: they don't have to lower their prices.

You want to be mad about $7/lbs ground beef---talk to your retailers. They don't have to relax their margins and the DOJ isn't investigating them. For giggles, USDA sheet for 80/20 ground beef is $1.47/lbs.

Also, for the love of goodness----learn to read a label and learn to fact check before you share.