Sustainability: it’s not a bad word and it also means profit

More than a just few times this year, I’ve witnessed industry speakers who were reluctant to answer questions on sustainability. It turns many a speaker’s face red. Sustainability carries such broad implications that it’s difficult to define with a short answer. Some people in our industry have apparently come to despise the word, and seem to cringe when they hear it. Many seem to have become suspicious of the concepts it represents. Speakers know this and often avoid the subject. Sustainability simply means the ability to sustain, or put another way, theability to continue. Almost all definitions of sustainability include three central principles: economic, environmental and social. In this blog, let’s consider the economic aspect as it relates to the meat industry. Economically speaking, growers, producers, feed lots, and packers have to be able stay in business. The economic issue is the foremost element of sustainability. If you put the people out of business that supply animals, all other elements of the business are null and void. The families that raise food animals simply have to be able to turn a profit, or it’s game over. Yet many factors threaten the sustainability of turning a small profit from raising animals: increasing government regulatory creep, pressure to pay for expensive third party audits, catastrophic diseases like PEDv and Avian flu, the high cost of land, input costs, and the difficulty of finding good labor, just to name a few. It’s often difficult to make any profit, especially for small and mid-sized operations.