Reclaiming the Value Chain

In 2018, when David Thorpe decided he wanted a break from managing his elderly parents’ farm, he, his siblings and their spouses put their heads together to come up with a new way to make the business commercially viable.

Managed through a focus on healthy soil, clean waterways and ethically raised animals, the regenerative farm had always been a source of high quality meat for the family. But with only 130 cattle, 60 calves and less than 100 lambs, the economics of going through the normal channels and selling to the meat works didn’t add up.

So they decided to retail the meat themselves.

“When you sell to the works, you are beholden to the vagaries of the market,” says Andy Williams, the husband of Rose – one of the Thorpe siblings. “Some months you get $8 per kg, the next $4 per kg. But if you’re not in control [of your supply chain] it’s controlling you. 

“The only way you make money selling to the works is by supplying quantity. We’re too small for quantity, so we have to try and make money from quality.”

With David moving to the North Island and Rose’s parents retiring from intensive duties, Andy and Rose stepped up to take over the day-to-day management and the launch of their farm-to-fork model. They began sending their cattle for processing at Harris Meats in Cheviot, North Canterbury, and the quarters were sent to local Golden Bay butcheress, Georgie Moleta. From there, Andy and Rose sold their steak and sausages at the Takaka Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.

The meat was a hit, and online orders and home deliveries were soon thriving. In the following years, Rose’s brother Jonathan and his wife Meredith moved back to the farm to help out with the deliveries and running the markets, while the other far-flung siblings contributed by running the administrative side of the growing business.

The COVID-19 period saw online sales doubling, as more locals sought to stock their freezers with quality, regeneratively raised meat to get through the lockdowns.

“We were able to carry on running during that time because we are food producers,” says Andy. “I was driving around with a trailer, delivering meat around Golden Bay. The only time people got to talk to anybody was when I met them by their letterboxes at the end of their driveways.” 

Although the business was flourishing, there was still one major limitation with the Ellis Creek operation – they were having to send their cattle and lambs to North Canterbury for processing. With the end goal being the supply of quality, locally-raised meat, low transport costs, and the highest standards of animal welfare, sending their animals on a 900km round-trip did not stack up. Behind the scenes, however, Andy and the Thorpe brothers had been working on a way to bring everything onsite.

The micro abattoir

When the family first decided to sell their meat direct to customers, the ultimate objective was to bring the entire supply chain – raising, slaughtering, processing and butchering – onto the farm. However, with the stringent regulations of MPI, this goal would take many years to realise.

“The easiest and quickest way to get up and running without lots of capital expenditure was to send animals to Cheviot, and then work with Georgie
the butcher here in the bay. That way we could start without a huge amount of expense.”

Right from the beginning, Andy and Rose’s brother Josh – both engineers – began the long process of setting up a micro abattoir. Andy says the main challenges were reading and interpreting the regulations, most of which don’t apply to producers that operate on such a small scale. “The rules for micro and mobile abattoirs have been written, but a lot of the follow-up legislation hasn’t changed yet,” he says. “You’re physically allowed to do it, but there’s no way of complying with some of the MPI regulations because they haven’t been updated to cater for micros.”

Although there was little guidance, Andy and Josh – who lives in Christchurch and manages the business’s accounts – eventually deciphered much of the paperwork that MPI required. Having a family full of engineers made jumping through regulatory hoops much easier, says Andy. “Engineers basically flowchart everything. It’s all just a process. We worked out what we believed we needed, engaged a consultant to review and amend, and progressed from there.”

While Josh took care of paperwork with MPI, Andy began to organise construction of the micro abattoir. He commissioned a tiny-house builder in the North Island to construct the trailer. It was then sent to Christchurch to have the structure built, including the gantries and stainless steel floor.

Inside the abattoir.

The chiller can handle four cattle beasts at a time.

The micro-abbatoir.

The structure was then sent to have the chiller built, after which Andy did the wiring, plumbing and fit out. Because many of MPI’s requirements are designed for mass production and there were no official design plans for micro abattoirs, Andy relied a lot on his interpretation and helpful MPI staff during the construction.

“We had to build it first hoping everything was going to comply. That’s one of the reasons the build took as long as it did – there was a lot of thinking between steps and a few design changes as we went. The MPI folk we dealt with were very helpful, especially our auditor, who is an MPI vet and meat inspector.”

Despite the uncharted waters, the micro abattoir was fully signed off this year, allowing the family to start slaughtering their animals on the farm and reach a level of production autonomy they’d never had before.

Andy says rather than coordinating their kill for the arrival of a truck once a month, the new facility means they can tailor their production to achieve a continuity of supply that keeps their commercial customers happy. In the early stages, however, it does come at a cost.

“It’s not a money-saving enterprise,” he says. “It’s costing us more to kill them at home than at Cheviot, but we have control over the process. We’d gone almost as far as we could with sending our animals away for slaughter, so now we’re going to be able to go a lot further.”

The family have been in ongoing discussions with supermarkets and other retailers about supplying local meat, which would allow them to significantly expand the business in line with their values.

“This would make the abattoir more profitable and it would give supermarket customers a greater choice. The fact that our cattle aren’t going on and off trucks is really important to some of our customers.”

Naturally, meat production must comply with MPI’s regulations, although this is sometimes not possible on the small scale at which Ellis Creek operates.

For example, to process and supply meat commercially, a producer has to get six carcasses from a single run laboratory tested for salmonella and E. coli. However, because Ellis Creek kills only two animals in a single batch, they cannot comply with this rule, and have to rely on the leniency of MPI.

“That’s what the rules are and we’re complying the best we can. They know it’s not our fault. It’s the fact that the regulations haven’t actually caught up.”

To sell the meat, a registered butcher has to process it, and Georgie Moleta is still contracted to do the knifework. While there are plans to set up a butchery onsite within a year, it requires a food control plan – something Josh is working on.

Regenerative principles 

Ellis Creek Farm has been in the Thorpe family for 80 years, after it was purchased by Bob and Phyllis Thorpe in 1937. Since that time, it has been farmed under the equivalent of regenerative principles, although that term wasn’t used back then.

“The definition wasn’t there yet. Regen ag is a pretty esoteric kind of label,” says Andy.

When Rose’s parents – Richard and Helena Thorpe – inherited the farm, they began using the Albrecht soil testing method to measure the health of soil,
and used natural fertilisers for quite a few years.

Now with third-generation Rose and Andy running the farm, they’ve continued and enhanced those regenerative principles, prioritising soil health and eliminating the use of herbicides or synthetic fertilisers.

Rose also began pursuing Korean Natural Farming (KNF) – an approach to farming that involves the culturing of indigenous microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and nematodes, in place of inorganic fertilisers.

Alongside this, Andy employs several regenerative methods, such as rotating cattle regularly through the paddocks and opening up the soil by broadcasting a diversity of seed mixes into the pasture, where they are rolled or trampled in by cattle.

“We try to graze differently from the conventional approach. We mob stock and move animals quickly through pasture so that we get better recovery times. It depends on the year or season as to how well it works.

“I use chicory in most of the farm’s seed mixes. It’s a deep rooted plant that brings up minerals that aren’t in a lot of the grasses.”

Oats and barley also break up soils and can be used like a cover crop.

“If we’re going to reseed a paddock later in the year we use daikon radish. It grows deep and the roots are thick. When the tops of the radishes are eaten off the roots rot and leave holes in the soil. This helps aerate the soil and lets water and air penetrate deeper than standard grasses.”

Ethics and economics

With regenerative principles guiding the management of the farm, the family are committed to trimming all the superfluous processes and eliminating as much waste as possible.

For example, the meat is shipped in cartons with natural wool insulation and the ice packs used in packaging will eventually be collected by the Ellis Creek team for a credit towards the following delivery.

All the offal and skins from the carcasses are sent to a market gardener who uses these for fertiliser, removing the need for an offal pit. 

“It’s about both ethics and economics. It’s hard to separate the two,” says Andy. “The more you can reuse something the bigger bang for your buck you get. The more you reuse the less waste there is.

“We try to make it easy for customers so they don’t have to go out of their way to meet their own sustainability goals.” 

The family have found that customers are invested in the ethos of the farm, which makes it easier to continue this approach.

“If there’s something that’s not as important to us, but is really important to customers, then we think about how we can incorporate that into our approach. Having a relationship with the community has been beneficial in guiding what we do and why.

“Whether it’s a steak or an avocado, more and more people want to know where their food comes from. All they need to do is come for a drive and look over the fence.” ■