Matt Pierson is at the forefront of Montana-based Producer Partnership, the country’s first and only USDA federally inspected processing facility owned and operated by a nonprofit. Through the program, ranchers can donate livestock they would otherwise cull, whether it be cattle, bison, pigs, sheep or goats. The animals are processed at no cost, and the protein is distributed to schools and food banks in Montana.
“As a traditional Montana rancher, I have spent my whole career trying to keep everything alive,” Matt told WLJ. “To go into this side of the industry has been a real eye-opener for me.”
Matt’s family has a storied ranching history in the north, with his great-great grandfather homesteading in Thompson, MT, in the early 1890s. The fifth-generation rancher now owns and operates Highland Livestock Company in Livingston with his wife, Kris, and sons, Jakob and Nik.
The start of changing lives
Matt grew up like most kids, playing a youth sport, although his sport of choice was the less-popular soccer rather than football like most boys his age, due to his smaller size. “In the ’80s, soccer was kind of a four-letter word in Montana,” Matt said with a laugh. “I always enjoyed it though, because it allowed me to play a sport that otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten to do.”
Matt fell in love with the sport, playing through high school and discovering his passion for coaching as a high school senior. Twenty-five years later, Matt was the president of the local youth soccer association and varsity coach for the high school girls’ varsity team. When COVID-19 hit, Matt saw firsthand how the shutdown affected families and their food security.
“We were all sort of sitting around trying to decide what we could do to help and realized that, you know, we do raise food for a living,” Matt said. “Although traditional cow-calf operations in Montana don’t have a finished product, we do have cull cows we could do something with.”
Matt got the idea to donate some hamburger meat to the community and enlisted a few neighbors to join him, gathering up six animals to donate. At the time, meat processors were in a brief holding pattern, pausing operations amid pandemic uncertainty. That short window worked in the group’s favor, allowing them to get the animals processed quickly before demand surged.
“We were very fortunate to get about 700-800 pounds done within a few days and start donating around Livingston,” Matt said. The Park County Community Foundation caught wind of the donation efforts and raised money to help pay for the processing, “which to be fair, I hadn’t even really thought about yet,” Matt said. “We were just trying to help people.”
Within a two-week time period, the Livingston Food Resource Center let the ranchers know that they had completely filled the center’s freezer space and there was no more room. The crew refocused their efforts to fundraise and raised about $13,000 within the week-and-a-half without even advertising.
“People just started dropping off animals at the ranch for us, just by word of mouth,” Matt said.
A couple weeks later, Matt was talking with a neighbor, who asked what he was going to call the fundraising efforts. “I said, ‘I don’t know, I didn’t know I needed to call it anything,’” Matt recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, you’re doing so much, you’re going to have to call it something.’”
That moment was the spark that ignited what would become the Producer Partnership.
In just a few weeks’ time in April 2020, the initiative had already donated about 3,000-4,000 lbs. of meat, and animals were still coming in. But processing was becoming a growing challenge, and they knew they had to start getting creative.
Matt joined forces with Missoula-based Dan Walker, who saw a segment on the news about the program and pledged his support as its first board member. Just six months later, what started as a local grassroots effort to help the nearby community, turned into a full-fledged 501(c)(3) nonprofit with its own board of directors. By the end of the year, discussions were already underway about opening their own processing facilities.
The group was fortunate to find a processor in Williston, ND, that was looking to expand its operations and was able to process hamburger for the program, but the six-hour, one-way trek to haul cattle made the group realize it was time to get serious about opening its own facilities.
In February 2021, Matt called an emergency meeting that led to a vote on establishing the Producer Partnership’s own processing facility. It was decided that building a modular facility would be the best option, and Matt and Dan got to work on what it would take to build a facility on the Highland Livestock ranch.
“Dan told me to be ready for the long haul,” Matt said. “I told him to give it two weeks, and we’d have the down payment.” Dan was skeptical—they needed $1.5 million. “It was about 10 days later that I texted him a picture of our bank accounts, showing that we had raised the $1.5 million,” Matt said.
“Granted, there’s a lifetime of work behind that to know the right people and have people that believe in you,” Matt added. “But we did it. And so, we ordered the facility.”
By April 2021, the design and paperwork were complete. In December, the units were delivered. And in July 2022—just over two years after that first hamburger donation—the Producer Partnership’s facility passed federal inspection and opened its doors.
A win-win solution
The Producer Partnership benefits both ends of the food chain: producers gain an outlet for culled livestock and consumers receive much-needed access to local protein sources—bridging the gap between those who raise food and those who need it the most.
“We get so many people that will donate animals because they want to know where the animal ends up and what its purpose is at the end and that it gets taken care of properly,” Matt said. “There are moments like that that add some amazing clarity to what it is that we do.”
The program’s advanced tracking system gives producers the opportunity to choose exactly where their donated livestock is going, whether it be to a local food bank or their children’s school.
“It encourages producers to have more of a local contact and more of a connection with their hometown,” Matt said. Over the past year, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of people donating to their local schools and food banks, even amid high prices for culled animals.
“I love seeing these kids having that pride of ownership of knowing that it was their family that helped out with lunch today,” Matt added. “How do we keep the next generation involved? This is one tiny tool that could inspire kids to want to provide food for their own kids’ school one day.”
Growth and expansion
Since its inception, the Producer Partnership has donated around 350,000 lbs. of beef. Of the producers that have donated, more than 90% have donated multiple times. To date, the program has received no federal funding and has relied completely on local support.
“When you look at all the models that they’re trying to reinforce, we definitely don’t fit that mold, and we’re okay with that,” Matt said. “We realize that we are vastly different, but we’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of individuals and foundations and other people that have really helped.”
In addition to local support, the facility also does a small portion of custom cutting for profit but keeps the percentage small to be able to focus on their main objective of processing donated livestock.
Looking toward the future, the Producer Partnership already has several projects in the works. The group is teaming up with the Gallatin Community College out of Bozeman to put together an internship program, giving students experience working in a processing facility. The team is also working with a group based out of Ireland to build a composting facility that they hope to have done soon.
Ultimately, Matt hopes to open up more facilities in other parts of the country. “I don’t feel that this should be a one-and-done concept,” he said. “I think it is something that is replicable that we can take on the road and help people at both ends.”
Although the program is small right now, it has a mighty impact in the local community, and Matt would like to see the grassroots effort grow well beyond Montana.
“I think that we are limited by our imagination,” he continued. “We are limited by our willingness to try something different and to say that we’re not okay with the norm, that we’re okay with trying something.
“Even if all we did was at the end of the day, we made everybody else think or realize that there are other ways to approach a problem, then that’s a huge victory in my mind,” Matt finished. — Anna Miller, WLJ managing editor
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