Students in the Grant School District are being treated to locally grown beef at lunchtime thanks to a renewed partnership with area livestock producers.

The district is restarting a program called Ranchers Feeding Students. Local ranchers can sign up to donate a cow, which is slaughtered and processed into hamburger and so on, then prepared by the district’s kitchen staff before being served to students in the cafeteria. Meals that feature locally grown beef will be advertised as such on the days when they’re being served.

While the cattle are donated and cost the district no money, processing the beef does not come free of charge. Costs associated with the slaughter, cutting and wrapping of the beef are covered by Farmers Ending Hunger, which has been providing the service to schools participating in the Ranchers Feeding Students program since 2007.

Stepping up to the plateAlong with footing the bill for cutting and wrapping services, Farmers Ending Hunger also donates a portion of its member farmers’ and ranchers’ harvest to local food banks, with financial support from the public through the Adopt-an-Acre program.

Farmers Ending Hunger started in 2004 after the program’s founder, Fred Ziari, learned that Oregon was the hungriest state in the nation at a meeting addressing the state’s food insecurity problem. That revelation led to discussions between Ziari and his colleagues, including agricultural producers in Eastern Oregon, regarding ways to feed the hungry.

“No one had ever asked them, the farmers, to help solve hunger problems in the state,” Ziari said. “They said of course they would.”

A nonprofit called Extended Harvest was founded by Jim Youde several years before Farmers Ending Hunger and worked along the same lines, including the Adopt-an-Acre program. Youde and Ziari met and compared notes, and the two efforts were combined under the name Farmers Ending Hunger with the Adopt-an-Acre program carrying forward.

The Farmers Ending Hunger website describes the ins and outs of the Adopt-an-Acre program this way: “Supporters who adopt acres donated by Northwest farmers and ranchers are helping to provide the funds necessary to process the food grown on that land and distribute it through an established network of local food banks and social service programs.”

The website further explains that the donations are tax-deductible and are turned into high-quality, ready-to-use products that will help reduce hunger in Oregon.

“That’s really how the public gets involved with Farmers Ending Hunger,” said John Burt, the organization’s executive director. “We get a lot of large quantities of potatoes (and) onions, we get cash from the sale of wheat, we get sweet cherries, vegetables at different times, and it all comes through in a pretty large quantity. Most of that goes directly to Oregon Food Bank, or in some cases the regional food banks.”

Show me the beefGrant School District had participated in the Ranchers Feeding Students program in the past, but the program had gone dormant for several years until Superintendent Mark Witty decided he wanted to revive it. He remembered the program from when he was previously employed with the district and thought he’d see if he could get it restarted.

It turned out to be easier than he expected.

“I knew that the program existed in the past, so I did a little bit of calling,” he said. “Literally, I just called a rancher and left a message, and that afternoon they called me up and said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got something.’ I just wanted to get it going again.”

The rancher Witty contacted was Mat Carter, who along with his wife, Jennifer, had donated a cow to Ranchers Feeding Kids in the past. Carter said donating the animal was a good way to support the community while giving kids access to high-quality beef.

“It’s great being able to support our schools, to be able to provide them with protein,” he said. “It’s a great way to support and give back to the community.”

Carter highlighted another benefit in donating beef to the school: The donation is a tax write-off.

Witty got connected with Farmers Ending Hunger, which agreed to pay for the processing of the animal.

“It took me a bit, but I figured out a course of action after talking to some folks out of Malheur County that do a similar program from the Cattlemen’s Association,” Witty said. “And they put me in contact with a guy by the name of John Burt, and he came through and he’s going to pay for the cut and wrap.”

Malheur County connection

Burt said the program had been going on for some time prior to his involvement.

“I just got looped into it,” he said. “It started over in Ontario, in Malheur County.”

Burt got involved after learning that Malheur County schools had a Ranchers Feeding Kids program but lacked the money for processing. Before Burt stepped up to cover cutting and wrapping costs, schools in Malheur County would sell one of their donated cattle to pay processing fees for the other animal.

That initial effort has morphed into Burt’s organization footing the bill for processing fees for multiple entities, including more than one school district in Grant County.

“I’ve probably done 40-some-odd head in Malheur County,” he said. “They’ve been the most active, it seems like, for some reason. … I’ve probably done 20-some-odd with the Grant School District over the years — not every year, maybe one or two at a time.”

Burt has helped facilitate the donation of a couple head of cattle through Ranchers Feeding Kids for the Dayville School District and has fielded calls for his services from the Long Creek School District, in addition to schools from Malheur County and the Grant School District.

“I just count the pounds as a donation of the animals and when that’s donated to us, we pay for the processing,” he said.

Burt said school districts participating in the program still need to find their own processing facilities, along with transporting the animal to and from the facility for processing. Finding a facility that can process their donated cattle is the most challenging part of the Ranchers Feeding Kids program, according to Bert.

“I tell the schools, you find the donated steer and you get it transported to wherever you’re going to get it processed, and I’ll pay for it,” Burt said.

Burt said the lion’s share of his work with Ranchers Feeding Kids comes from Grant and Malheur Counties although it isn’t difficult for an interested school district to get in on the action. 

“If they have a rancher that is willing to donate and a processing facility that they’re comfortable with, I’ll work with them,” Burt said. 

Spreading the word

Bonnie Christensen, the Secretary/Treasurer of the Malheur County Cattleman’s Association said she isn’t aware of too may other school districts in Oregon outside Grant and Malheur counties that participate in Ranchers Feeding Kids, she did mention that she’d heard word of Baker County trying to get in on the action as well although she couldn’t say for sure. Christensen said participation in Ranchers Feeding Kids is as easy as a phone call to your local cattleman’s association. 

“We’ll get a contact from a rancher who says they have a cow…basically if you have a cow, I will find a school that needs it,” she said.  

For Witty, the resurgence of the Ranchers Feeding Kids program is a way to expose students to high-quality, locally grown beef.

“You can tell the difference,” he said. “It doesn’t take a beef connoisseur to tell the difference. The quality is so good with a locally grown product.”

Now that the Grant School District has revived its partnership with the Ranchers Feeding Kids program, he’s hoping to get more Grant County cattle producers interested in donating animals.

“We just wanted to get it out there that, ‘Hey, we’re ramping that program up again and we could use a few more cows from time to time,’” he said. “It’s just always appreciated by our students — and certainly our kitchen staff.”