From Paddock to Plate – The Our Cow Story
Dave was 28 and Bianca was just 23 years old when they bought 1300 acres of Farm land in the Northern Rivers.
Three hours inland from the beachside town of Byron Bay, Dubadar has a diverse landscape of valleys and creeks, native forestry and native and improved pastures for their cattle.
The first years on the farm
The first two years on the farm were anything but easy, “we experienced fire and flooding, followed by a drought and then more fires…”
In August 2018 a helicopter rescue flight turned up while they battled massive fires that were within 200 metres of their house.
As they bulldozed up their grass to starve the fire of more fuel, the helicopter touched down.
In typical fashion, Dave still managed to crack a joke during the ordeal. The first thing he said to the rescue pilot? “Most people turn up at our house in a vehicle or on a horse. Not usually in a helicopter, mate”
In typical fashion, Dave still managed to crack a joke during the ordeal. The first thing he said to the rescue pilot? “Most people turn up at our house in a vehicle or on a horse. Not usually in a helicopter, mate”
Support far and wide
3 Water bombing planes soon flew overhead to help with the effort.
Bianca and Dave were overwhelmed with the support they received by the wider community. A letter hand written by the Brisbane Girl Scouts made Bianca realise how far-reaching the support was:
“It is in times like that that you really get to see how much people do care about the farming community. But that connection between city and country doesn’t have to stop when the fire is out or the drought is over.”
The Start of Our Cow
Creating a consistent and direct connection, year round, between farmers and the people they feed became the inspiration behind OUR COW. When the opportunity for people to get to know their farmers, buy from them directly and give people the farm to plate experience with nutritious meat came up, it was a no brainer for us to make the next step.
In January 2019 Bianca and Dave launched the Our Cow website – where people could order their meat online, directly from the farmer.
The decision to offer paddock to table produce with simple and easy Australia-wide delivery, had become a necessity.
“We couldn’t keep going how we were or we were going to go broke.” Dave says.
Previous to launching Our Cow Bianca and Dave had been selling their cattle at the Sale Yards. And on any given day the price that they would get for their cattle was unpredictable.
“You pretty much just have to take what can get on the day. You have the option of taking the cattle home if the prices offered are too low but, but then you have to factor in the expense of transporting them back to the farm and the cost of continuing to feed them. The buyer knows this, so they pretty much have the upper hand when negotiating a price.”
Once you sell your animal through the saleyards you don’t know what happens next, it could go go to an Industrial Feedlot where it is fattened with extensive grain-only programs and growth hormones.
Cattle in Industrial Feedlots are often kept in small grass-less paddocks and their movement limited so they don’t lose any weight.
As paddock to plate farmers, all of our cattle are pasture-raised and hormone free, meaning that we can produce and deliver fresh and nutritious meat for the people we feed. It’s important to us that our customers know exactly what they’re eating and where it came from when they support us by purchasing their beef box subscriptions from Our Cow.
Around 80% of the meat that you buy at the Supermarket comes from an Industrial Feedlot.
But there is also a huge export market to Asia and Europe for beef so in fact most of Australia’s premium grade beef is being exported overseas where it fetches a better return.
What ends up on Australian plates?
The ‘cull cows’ (the mutton of the cow world) is often what people are unwittingly buying when they buy meat from conventional outlets.
With Our Cow we source beef from our own farm and as demand increases we are looking to connect with Sustainable Farmers who align with Our Cow’s core values so we can provide people with an insight into where their food comes from and ensure the highest grade craft beef is available to them.
This way we will also be able to offer Farmers above market prices for their animals so that everyone is taken care of. We want to disrupt the monopolisation of the Meat Industry (currently as few as 2 companies own over 56% of Australia’s beef supply) but this has to be consumer led.
This is where your dollar supports sustainable change. When you buy from Our Cow it is an investment back into high welfare farming practices and a fairer go for Farmer’s.
It is little wonder that the average age of a Farmer in Australia is over 60. With the current conditions of the Industry not many young people can see a viable future in farming.
But we want to change that. We want to support the current and new generations of Farmers to embrace the change that is necessary for us all to redefine the state of the meat industry.
Join us on the Our Cow Journey. For regular updates subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Instagram and Facebook. And if you are a farmer who would like to learn more about the Our Cow network of Farmers please get in touch.
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