I was going to comment back on your most recent blog post, but I could not find a comment section at the bottom of it....nor a link or way to jump to a facebook page wall to comment there instead....you had neither or I could not find either.... :((
I don't know if that is intentional.....but it seems in your arena/niche that you provide service and products to, that a dialogue feature would be highly beneficial to both you and the movement you seem to want to create.....otherwise, you seem to be a lone voice aching loudly in the forest.
My question/comment:
Overall, I like your logic and I think most regular people that hear that message, would like it. However, while the break up of the big daddy conglomerate idea sounds beneficial, my first thought would be as you even sort of alluded to....can it really make a profit with those volume parameters and growth limitations.
I think most growers and food providers at the local farmers markets do it for hobby and to get a small income to apply toward their massive expenditure of money and time. I doubt that most of them are remotely profitable and I'd be interested to know what percentage of them are profitable if you know. So on that premise of my own belief about them, I also wonder if a smaller meat processing plant would be too. And if they could, it seems the ones we used to haul our animals to 20 years ago around here (Bastrop, Smithville, Rockne, Lockhart)......would still be in business, yet most or all of them are way long gone to the local history books and our dieing memories.
So, since you have the most daily/weekly contact with meat processors of some (unknown to me) size, I'd be interested to know if you have had a dialogue with them on these concepts and what their response would be. Would they do it and why would they do it and do they believe they could do it profitably without sacrificing quality and safety, etc.?
Also, it is odd thing to discuss a business system of any kind that from the get-go is designed with volume controls and limitations....the whole reason to be in business is to figure out how to make it profitable, keep it profitable through various market changes, political and legal changes, environmental changes, etc....and then from there, to grow it to be more profitable. It is silly to be in a business with a plan to shrink or stay in a stalled growth plan on purpose. So if your smaller unit model system did work, it would never stay small, it would just grow back into another conglomerate big daddy operation again.
One twist to your idea that may make it motivating for the owner/operator to remain local and limited in size would be to design the model from the get-go like a franchise. So instead of smaller plants closing to build larger plants or adding on to become massive facilities handling greater volumes and animals from further distances, etc.....design the incentives to promote owner/operators to expand another smaller systematized facility in a new area nearby that is not serviced well are in a area where the population is growing and will need to be serviced.....like you said, the population is growing and it will always be growing. So the model could grow with the population growth and maybe could also be built to achieve the other goals in your concept of a localized processing plant.
Walgreens is a good example. Rather than become a larger and larger box store and become the pharmacy depot of their niche, when they reached the size where that model was a possible direction path for their business, they did not take that path. Instead, they took a turn into the cookie-cutter model and put a smaller store on almost every corner in the country....sometimes less than a mile apart. Specifically designed to serve a small number of families per store. They played with the footprint, product mix and product pricing to create a profitable unit.....then duplicated it accordingly into both older and newer markets of the size they had determined it could work profitably in. They still are a larger corporate entity, but they serve the public on an extremely localized basis and they just grow along with the population and growth as it grows.
Now I know that does not erase the big daddy aspect....but in business, I don't think you can ever erase it....unless you use government and legal methods. And when you go down that path, your moving away from the wonderful capitalist system toward a very disturbing socialist system. I don't believe their is a middle ground that is appropriate. In some ways we already have in our society these kind of attempts at middle ground and I have yet to see them really work out as intended. So restrained/bridled/heavy regulated capitalism is just as bad as no capitalism.
Well that would be my .02 cents. I'm certainly not nearly as passionate about this dynamic situation as you, but I think you can see how your thought process can get legs if a dialogue feature is available. And sometimes those extra legs become focus groups, action committees, votes, results, change.....
Best wishes. :-)
Respectfully,
Jack Jr.
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