Two North Dakota Businesses Awarded ADD Funding

Two small-town, family-oriented, and producer/community-driven businesses out of North Dakota recently received funding from the North Dakota Department of Agriculture (NDDA) through the Agriculture Diversification and Development (ADD) grant.

Butcher’s Edge of Edgeley, North Dakota, and Kramlich-Deede Meats of Medina, North Dakota, recently received ADD Funding to enhance their ability to source U.S. beef through the state of North Dakota, offer good old-fashioned sausage recipes, and increase the number of jobs available within their respective communities.

Butcher’s Edge…

Butcher’s Edge is a fully custom-exempt packing plant in that can handle up to 20-head of cattle a week. Since officially opening on June 1, 2022, they have been able to process cattle, sheep, hogs, buffalo, and even some wild game for producers in the area and South Dakota.

This facility is completely producer-owned; each of the five owners has an agriculture background and most are currently active farmers and ranchers in the area.

During COVID-19, just like producers all over the U.S., the owners of Butcher’s Edge “found out that wait times and supply chain issues could really disrupt some things,” and they found themselves in a tough spot due to a “lack of options for getting animals processed,” Garitt Irey, co-owner of Butcher’s Edge, explained.

“We had ranchers waiting 12 -16 months, if not longer, to get an animal booked in for slaughter,” he stated.

Planning for the facility began in 2019, and since its opening in 2022, Irey explained that the demand to get cattle processed has skyrocketed; they’ve been able to decrease wait time to get cattle to be processed and have been able to provide opportunities for producers to sell their products directly off the ranch to around the state, restaurants, and grocery stores because they are state inspected.

Recently, the Butcher’s Edge was approached by the Great Plains Food Bank out of Fargo, North Dakota to provide “6,000 pounds of ground beef a month to the food pantry […] for them to distribute out to the different food banks that they work with across North Dakota.”

Source: westernagreporter.com