SPOKANE -- Local produce and meat are projected to be the most requested items on restaurant menus this year. But America's large food distribution system can be a complicated place for small farmers.
When it comes to getting local meat to market, the maze is even more difficult to maneuver.
There was a time when most families sat together to eat dinner, and chances are the meat your mother served was raised nearby.
Over the decades, the paradigm has shifted. Massive feedlots replaced small farms and meat started traveling hundreds of miles. But now the pendulum is swinging back.
"There is an increased desire to buy local," says Reardan farmer Gary Angell, owner of Rocky Ridge Ranch. "I think about buying local every day."
Angell and his wife pour their hearts into their pasture-raised animals. Angell believes the keys to his healthy animals are as simple as fresh air, sunshine and exercise.
"None of these animals have ever been injected, they've never had any medication," says Angell.
But many small farmers, like Angell and his wife, have an access problem -- they can't get the meat raised on their farms into most grocery stores.
In order to be sold at a grocery store, restaurant or farmers market, animals must be slaughtered at a USDA inspected facility.
"When I first moved here, I think there were almost a dozen meat processors and packing companies right here in Spokane," recalls Angell. "There's none now in Spokane."
There are still some left in Eastern Washington, but the cost can be considerable to a small farmer.
"They get busy, especially in the fall, where if you don't schedule out ahead of time, you can't do it," says Angell. "It makes it difficult for people who want to buy local beef."
At Spokane's Main Market Co-Op, you'll find some of Angell's meats in the case, and sometimes you'll even find him making deliveries. But Angell is one of the few farmers clearing all the processing hurdles to get to the grocery store.
Main Market's Jennifer Hall will tell you it's much easier to stock local wine, cheese and potatoes than it is to stock local meat.
"The meat supply that we feature here is very local," says Hall, but "if local producers can't get access to get their stuff to market, it's impossible for us, then, to offer it."
And if Main Market can't offer it, they show customers how to buy it right from the ranch. They keep a list of ranchers who will sell direct and rent low cost freezers for people who don't have room at home.
It's a system that circumvents Main Market's own meat counter.
Farmer Brent Olsen is also making his own rules. He raises grass-fed beef and went so far as to buy Smokey Ridge Meats, a USDA inspected slaughter house in Chewelah.
"There's always a federal inspector here on the premises," says Olsen.
His facility is small, processing about 15 animals per week, compared to thousands at a major corporation.
"We can't crank out the volume that would be needed to fill up the pipeline for Safeway and stuff," says Olsen.
But he does offer products in his own retail store, and at specialty stores, like Main Market Co-Op.
The meat selection at Main Market is still smaller than Hall would like, but there are still passion-filled farmers eager to grow their neighbors' food.
"I love it," says Angell. "I loved it when I was a kid and I still do."
Some local farmers avoid USDA processing completely by selling meat directly to the consumer. That allows them to go through custom, state-permitted butchers.
Other farmers say allowing those same butchers to also process meat for retail distribution in Washington would help ease the bottleneck. The idea has been proposed at the state level with little action.
