Graduate's meat box enterprise to help farmers diversify
A 23-year-old farming graduate is helping his university friends establish agricultural enterprises after successfully launching a meat box business, despite not having livestock.
Jack Saunders said he had created his Box to Belly venture as “a little side hustle” after studying agribusiness at Harper Adams University for four years and gaining experience on a placement with leading abbatoir Woodhead Brothers who supply Morrisons supermarket.
He said: "I thought I’m quite enjoying this – I have experience in butchery as well and livestock production – so I thought let’s try and make a business out of it.”
While Mr Saunders does not come from a farming family, he started volunteering on a farm aged 12, milking cows, before going on to work at an Aberdeen Angus finishing unit. At the same time he commuted four days a week from his Barnsley home to Askham Bryan College, York to study agriculture.
The course included a placement at Blacker Hall Farm Shop in Wakefield where he learnt butchery skills.
He said: “I got general idea for the meat industry at Woodhead Brothers helping run the boning holes, the livestock team, meat sales. I went and finished my university degree and then Morrisons offered me a job buying pigs and cattle, going out on farms and meeting farmers, which is part of the job I really enjoy. With Box to Belly I get to do that as well, helping farmers sell direct to consumers.
"I don’t have a farm myself so there’s one or two supply issues, so that’s why I’m not fully running a meat box business all the time."
Mr Saunders said the enterprise had expanded into one in which he helps people he had been at university with to launch similar ventures.
He said a number of his university friends had come from farming backgrounds and the meat boxes enabled them to establish an identity on their farms while their parents continue to be the main farm managers.
Mr Saunders said: “The problem was they’d gone home after university and their dads still ran the farms, so they wanted to put their own stamp on the farm.
He said Box to Belly had been launched on social media to showcase British agriculture.
Mr Saunders said: “The Government is asking farmers to diversify and it seems a little bit unfair to ask them to diversify away from farming. By selling meat boxes they can still stay in farming. It’s supporting local butchers and smaller abbatoirs as well. I think there’s only 50 abbatoirs in the country.
”Long journeys to the abbatoir are bad for animal welfare and also the meat quality. If an animal is stressed out the meat goes tougher and darker.
“It’s helping farmers do what they do best, and that’s farm the land, and by selling direct to consumers make a bigger profit margin for them.
”Since I’ve set up the social media page I’ve had an inbox full of people wanting meat boxes. Some are on a waiting list - I’m doing a longhorn beef meat box for Christmas.
"Eventually I would like it to be an online platform. Like an eBay for farm to fork.”