We started talking about the need for small-scale regional abattoirs shortly after we started farming pigs and cattle in 2011, but building a boning room was the immediate priority as we struggled to find regular butchery from the beginning. After commissioning the boning room in January 2014 and the commercial kitchen in July 2015, we forsook industrial grain supplies for the pigs’ feed, shifting entirely to waste stream by the end of 2016. Each of these moves steadily reduced our reliance on commodity supply chains, bringing control of our resource base onto the farm one link at a time.
Our last tie to industrial food systems (aside from diverting their so-called waste from landfill and into the tummies of hungry piggehs) is slaughter. While there are no obvious financial savings to us in building a small facility that can’t lean on economies of scale, the value to us in improved welfare for the animals on their last day is priceless. And of course, like smallholders around the world, we recognize the risk to our entire system should we lose access to the large-scale abattoirs we currently use. This risk is made all the greater by extreme centralisation, which recently got worse with the acquisition of our pig abattoir by the world’s biggest meatpacker JBS, who incidentally were the most affected in the meat industry globally by covid shutdowns.
After years of research on small-scale on-farm and regional abattoirs in the US and Australia, we have settled on a vision to build a micro-abattoir here at Jonai Farms. But unlike building a boning room or kitchen in a quick six-month conversion of a 40-foot refrigerated container, an abattoir is a much bigger undertaking, physically, legislatively, and financially.
We currently butcher with and for seven other farms, and there are several more interested in collaborating if we build an abattoir and bigger boning room and chiller capacity. The existing boning room and commercial kitchen facilities have served us well for the past eight years, but we are at capacity in terms of providing services for others. We are therefore building a new boning room, kitchen and farm gate shop alongside the abattoir to accommodate up to a cap of about 15 farms’ needs.
We are engaged in deeper relationships of reciprocity and mutual aid with these and other farms in collectively solving problems, deepening our knowledge of agroecology, sourcing feed, and sharing occasional labour. The other farmers’ access to our facilities is provided at cost – provision of processing facilities is not how we earn our livelihood, it’s how we ensure more farmers can earn a right livelihood themselves.
We envision the Jonai Meatsmith Collective will be owned and operated by Jonai Farms, but will function as ‘community-supported slaughter’ (CSS) in a similar way to community-supported agriculture (CSA). And like the boning room hire, slaughter will be offered at cost. Farms will sign up as members of the Collective and pay a percentage of their anticipated slaughter fees for the year ahead up front to secure a year of monthly slaughter. While Jonai Farms will employ staff who will coordinate scheduling and manage logistics and communications with members, there will be opportunities for farmers to collectively discuss their needs and negotiate schedules that will accommodate all members fairly and efficiently.
Each year, members will be invited to attend an Annual General Meeting (AGM), where a Profit & Loss (P&L) and Budget will be presented, enabling everyone to democratically set pricing for slaughter to ensure: a viable and resilient meat processing facility, the highest standards of animal welfare, financially sustainable slaughter for members, and fair wages for all staff.
Funding is a critical piece of the puzzle – just as we eschew external inputs at our farm, we are committed to avoiding debt to build infrastructure. Debt avoidance is pivotal to degrowth thinking and doing. The interest we would have to repay – profits to the bank’s shareholders – would seriously undermine our capacity to build and operate a viable abattoir. In addition to our savings, a creative combination of offering some enticing rewards such as Tammi’s upcoming cookbook (!), Speckleline hides, and in person fundraising, with the possibility of some grant money, will be used to raise the funds we need to build the facility, and as you’ll read below, we’ll be accepting donations as well. We've also been supported by the excellent young agrarians, who raised 16 of our surplus pigs, and have butchered and sold the pork independently to kick off our fundraising. The business model will be self-sustaining, and reliant on its not-for-profit approach.
Our current budget estimates are coming in between $400k and $500k. There are a lot of unknowns in an owner-built facility that will be functional and durable, environmentally sustainable with very high animal welfare standards for lairage and stunning, and aesthetically pleasing for workers and visitors alike, using a combination of new and secondhand materials as appropriate to all of these values. There are no ‘out of the box’ solutions for context specific problems, no matter how much industrial society wants you to think there are.
For many years we have been working to build diversity and resilience on the farm – from biodiversity through to diverse skillsets amongst our team. With the abattoir addition, our aim is to enable all of us to be able to work across the system – farming, slaughtering, butchering, and delivering – as well as maintaining a regular spot on the lunch roster. As we’ll be processing for several other farms, there will be plenty of work to go around! Jonai Farms already functions as a farmer incubator, and adding an abattoir will mean the opportunity to teach whole value chain skills to grow a future generation of farmers and farm and food workers. Tammi and lead farmhand Adam are currently nearing completion of their meat inspector training – another piece of the puzzle solved.
The following is our proposed timeline, subject to all the caveats of things beyond our control, such as Council planning timelines, supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Stuart’s and other workers’ availability, other farm demands, funding, and the weather.
Timeline
Oct 2021- Jun 2022
Project planning phase
· Development of vision and project plan
· Abattoir design
· Draft budget
· Preparation of Development Application
· Funding model development for capital expenses
· Business modelling
Apr 2022
Commence fundraising
Jun 2022
Submit Development Application to Council
Nov-Dec 2022
Site preparation & start ordering equipment
Jan 2023
Commence construction
Oct 2023
Commission facility, including license with Primesafe
De-commission and sell existing facilities
As always at Jonai, we remain committed to radical transparency. As we progress this project, we will share our learnings with you for better or worse, and we will make all of our documentation freely available.
We have always shared what we learn, and we will continue to do so, but in the interest of raising the funds for the project, we have decided to accept donations from any who might like and be able to provide a bit of support for our efforts to radically transform the food system from the ground up. Unlike in capitalist society generally, the ability to pay will NOT provide privileged access to the knowledge we are sharing, but rather will ensure that it is shared with everyone.
Imagine if our communities all around Australia and the world pooled our resources in this way to reclaim control of the means of production, and the means of communication, energy, transport – the sky’s the limit!
Viva!