Ben Buchanan learned butchery from older workers in a succession of shops. As that generation retired, he saw farmers left with fewer places to take their animals and shops struggling to find skilled replacements. When the pandemic disrupted the meat industry in 2020, he pushed to finish a mobile meat-processing trailer he had been building. “I really gotta get this thing done and get out there and start doing my thing,” he recalled thinking.
Alongside its butchery and mobile meat-processing work, his Mt. Lebanon-based company Unified Fields trains workers and helps others open or improve processing facilities, narrowing one of the gaps in Southwestern Pennsylvania’s food economy. Across the Pittsburgh region, producers also face obstacles finding land, paying for equipment, arranging deliveries and securing buyers.
Those concerns brought growers, food businesses and advocates to Sherwood Event Center on Oct. 1 for Pittsburgh Local Lab: The Future of Food Production, organized by the community resilience nonprofit Mechanism. The conversation in Wilkinsburg was a step in a foundation-funded process that will include a roundtable later this month, but which depends for its ultimate success on community consensus that a stronger local food economy is crucial.
Their discussion showed how problems compound. A grower needs a lease long enough to justify improving the soil. Farms might combine harvests to fill larger orders, but someone must organize deliveries. A butcher needs workers and equipment, then customers willing to buy more than the most desirable cuts.
Connecting the people and programs working on those problems is a central concern, said Laura Masulis, Mechanism’s senior program manager leading the regional project. “There’s amazing talent and expertise and connections already in the region,” she said.
The region has a Greater Pittsburgh Food Action Plan, while Chatham University’s Center for Regional Agriculture, Food and Transformation (CRAFT) provides business assistance.
But business owners and nonprofits described difficulty finding assistance, understanding requirements, knowing whom to contact and addressing perceptions that food companies are risky investments, Masulis said. That leaves people navigating separate sources of help while trying to grow food or keep a business open.
Clare Clark, a coalition manager at the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council, pointed to opportunities for “connecting farmers to land opportunities” and “institutions to local producers,” including larger buyers such as schools and hospitals.
It starts with land
New York-based Mechanism, formerly the Urban Manufacturing Alliance, began hosting listening sessions around Pittsburgh last winter. A seven-person local group helped guide the project, which identified interest in sharing workers, buying supplies together and combining deliveries. “We’re working on two levels at the same time, trying to get some quick earlier wins and then also some longer-term bigger investments happening too,” Masulis said.
At the local lab event, Mechanism’s Director of Program Strategy Tanu Kumar moderated a panel with Buchanan, Clark and Chatham professor Chris Murakami, who teaches students to examine farming, the environment and food production.
Murakami brought students from his agroecology class at Chatham University to the gathering, encouraging them to move from “working in the food system” to “working on the food system” by examining how land, ownership and access to buyers shape local food production.
Clark said a starting point is land access for growers. Lots can have steep slopes, poor sunlight or contaminated soil, while short leases discourage growers from investing in improvements. “It’s a difficult landscape to navigate,” Clark said.
The Pittsburgh Food Policy Council’s land-access committee is developing a guide to land options, applications, timelines and costs. Clark said housing and community gardens should coexist, adding, “But there’s a lot of work there.”
Murakami described reviewing records of former Allegheny County farms being converted into housing developments while working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Longer leases and opportunities to buy land would help growers protect investments, he said.
Buchanan drew attention to efforts to replace farmland with townhouses that add to the number of people who need food. “What are all these people going to eat?” he asked.
Cooperation and its challenges
Once growers have land, working together could help them reach more customers.
Murakami described a produce-selling pilot connected to Chatham’s BRIDGES project, which links Eden Hall Farm with Pittsburgh urban growers. The idea was to combine crops from several small farms into a subscription service in which customers would receive regular boxes containing produce from participating growers. A farmer who could not supply enough variety alone could contribute to a fuller box assembled by the group.
But combining crops also meant coordinating collection, transportation and communication, while accounting for everyone’s time. The original subscription plan proved difficult to put into practice, Murakami said. “The biggest challenge was just the logistics and transportation of it,” he said.
He also described a shared-fund model: Growers would set aside a portion of produce sales and decide together how to use that money, including for equipment or other farm improvements. The aim is to make selling together support the farms’ longer-term needs.
Selling together
Meat processors face similar questions. Buchanan described a Washington County processor facing substantial planning expenses before construction on an expansion. “Meat processing is a very capital intensive industry,” he said. “It’s not a tech unicorn, it’s not gonna generate 10x returns.”
Once operating, a processor still needs buyers for everything it produces. Steaks may sell quickly, while trim — the smaller pieces left after larger cuts are removed — accumulates in freezers instead of being sold as ground meat.
Buchanan proposed collecting trim from several small processors and finding dependable buyers. This way, government agencies and other large purchasers could buy more local meat, he suggested.
Masulis said much of the existing purchasing and delivery network serves large companies at a scale small producers cannot easily match. Combining orders and sharing transportation could help smaller businesses reach buyers.
Will planning be worth the effort?
Farmers and processors also need support to participate in planning, panelists said. Attending meetings can mean lost income, while livestock still needs care.
Clark said organizers must “make sure that their time is adequately valued,” including paying participants and involving them as partners in grant-funded projects.
Masulis said a healthier regional system would mean:
- More successful farms
- More local purchasing by schools, hospitals and restaurants
- Better wages and working conditions.
“It’s not like it’s going to be all locally grown and made,” she said. But a larger share could be.
Mechanism’s work to gather input and develop proposals runs through November, supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Putting proposals into practice depends on further funding and community support. An Oct. 22 roundtable will bring findings to funders and policymakers.
“We don’t want to own any of this long term,” Masulis said. “The hope is that we’re sort of catalyzing other local folks to take some of these ideas and approaches and move them forward.”
Aakanksha Agarwal is a wine, travel and lifestyle writer from India. Formerly a Bollywood stylist, she now resides in Pittsburgh, and can be reached at aakanksha.agarwal1988@gmail.com.
MOST READ STORIES
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
