Ranchers got tired of Big Beef taking their profits. So they’re starting their own processing...

A highly concentrated beef market has meant higher prices for consumers and lower returns for the people raising the animals. Some ranchers in the Midwest and Great Plains want a new option by organizing their own processing plants.
A crane looms above a dusty field just outside of North Platte, Nebraska, where trucks loaded with dirt criss-cross the busy site and workers set up a foundation. Two years ago, an old sewer lagoon took up this stretch of land. Cattails and marshy soil made the field a swampy mess.

Today, it’s the future site of Sustainable Beef, a meatpacking plant that Nebraska ranchers and cattle feeders began planning in 2020.

Sustainable Beef is one of a few projects across the Midwest and Great Plains, where local producers came together to organize their own meat processing facilities in a bid to break away from the four massive companies that dominate the beef market.