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The November 18 issue of Time magazine ran a cover story titled “The Gods of Food,” with chefs David Chang, René Redzepi, and Alex Atala—a bad-boy/media-darling triumvirate from around the globe (the US, Denmark, and Brazil)—gracing the cover. With the word “gods,” the editor makes it clear from the get go: no women chefs are included in what he’s deemed the best of the best who “influence what (and how) you eat.” Yes, two women pastry chefs are included—in a side bar—as well as four influential women in the larger food industry, but no women chefs join Chang et al. in the main story and unnaturally patrilineal “family tree” graphic.
Reactions were swift and loud, especially after the editor responsible for the spread, Howard Chua-Eon, offered a lame rationale in an Eater interview for why no women chefs made the list. This debate about gender and the food industry is neither new nor likely to go away anytime soon. One reason why women in the industry are not as prevalent as men has been attributed to a lack of funding or interest by investors; Anita Lo, chef at Annisa in New York, argues this very point in a NYT article from a multi-part response to the Time piece.
St. Louis is no different from other cities, where men remain at the center of the industry, both in terms of numbers and media coverage. Perhaps that will change as more women enter into areas that have been historically male dominated—not just hot lines in the kitchen, for example, but meat production and distribution.
Enter Leslie Moore (right), the “girl” behind Farmer Girl Meats, a relatively new company that delivers grass-fed, pasture-raised meats to your home. Moore recounted a similar experience regarding wary investors in a recent interview. In 2012, Moore applied for an Arch Grant and made it to the end of the contest, finishing within the top 20 out of 400 applicants.
The overall experience was positive in the way it encouraged her to put together her business and marketing plan and revealed that there was real interest in the concept. At the same time, Moore was reminded that the business world is not gender neutral: “It was interesting that there are so many investors who are intrigued in theory . . . but when it comes to reality . . . in a male-dominated investment community, which is tech-heavy,” the interest quickly faded, especially since the question was “how big can you get and how fast?” For Moore, big and fast are not part of the equation.
While many women may have stopped there, Moore forged ahead and created Farmer Girl Meats. The focus on gender apparent in her branding comes from her experiences working in the corporate world and seeing how farming and particularly meat have been traditionally connected to all things masculine. “As a female, I’ve always thought that we can aesthetically make this a better experience than it is—there’s just so much opportunity; it can be fun and beautiful. We can share this with people,” she said.
Narratives abound of individuals leaving the corporate world and applying their business acumen to entrepreneurial endeavors related to food, whether it’s farming or opening a restaurant or roasting coffee. Moore, who has a B.S. in biology and an MBA from Washington University, did exactly that when she left a marketing position at Nestlé Purina to focus on the new business. Working fulltime, traveling, raising one child, and being pregnant with the second led to Moore “crying uncle,” as she realized that “it wasn’t working.” What did work is the family meat she shared with friends—they wondered how they could get some, and Moore moved one step closer to Farmer Girl Meats.
The narrative of women who embark on second careers rooted in the food industry is particularly romantic, and at first glance of the stylish Farmer Girl Meats website, which shows adorable towheaded children in wagons, a family sitting down to dinner al fresco (above), and mouth-watering cuts of meat, the idyll appears alive and well. Of course, a great deal of hard work lies below the surface of those photos, and that’s just one of the topics we discussed during our interview.
Moore, a self-described “country rat,” grew up “across the hop” or on the Kansas side of the Kansas-Missouri border. Farming ran in the family on both sides, and her maternal grandmother bequeathed her farm property to Moore, her two sisters, and her mother (right), who is a third-generation farmer. Why women only as beneficiaries? “That was her way of being sassy,” Moore explained.
That farm plus another farm property hold the cattle that produce some of the meat for Farmer Girl Meats. Moore’s parents, Al and Roxanne Mettenburg, are in charge of the cattle and sheep. The first step to raising healthy animals that taste great? Growing native prairie grasses for grazing—something Al takes particular pride in. Additionally, the family has high standards that go back to breeding and move forward through raising, handling, and slaughtering.
Within the last year, Moore and her husband (a “small-town rat”) were able to acquire a farmstead in Warrenton from his grandparents. Currently a “farm rehab” project, the 20-acre Warrenton property is slowly being revitalized, and while it’s too small to hold cattle—three to four acres are needed to feed each cow—the couple aspires to put his grandfather’s garden back together (he used to feed the town with his produce, sharing its bounty especially with all the widows) and to keep chickens. Right now, the property’s walk-in freezer allows them to store meat closer to St. Louis, where Moore and her husband live with their three children.
The confluence of available farmland in the family and her husband’s outside income allows Moore to focus fulltime on the business and raising their children. What she’s created is fairly unique, not only in the products offered, but in the fact that she’s allowed the business to “bloom” slowly. She does not refer to her product as a commodity and is “okay” with the small size of her enterprise. She explained: “We have just enough acreage to be dangerous—to do a premium, craft product. We are not high volume.”
In fact, the low volume of cattle led Moore to partner with two families in her Kansas farming community: the Roberts family, who raise heritage pigs—“Big Blacks”—with their 14-year-old son Jake at the helm, and the Bauman family, whose daughter Roseanna operates one of the only small, USDA-approved poultry plants in the area. A hand-curated meat box (left) from Farmer Girl Meats contains products from all three small producers, and the addition of the pork and chicken, which take far less time to mature (chickens need 2 months, pigs need 6, and cows 18 months to 2 years), allows Moore to supplement the beef and lamb with artisanal meats that are also pasture raised and humanely slaughtered.
Bauman processes her own chickens, while the Roberts’s pigs go to Stinson Meat Processing, the same place where Moore’s family’s cattle and sheep are slaughtered. Interestingly, Stinson’s went from a “small mom-and-pop shop” to USDA approved, thanks in part to the collaboration with Farmer Girl Meats. Having a processing plant that is USDA approved is a game changer, according to Moore. “If you really want to market your product, you need to be USDA,” especially since without the approval, meat cannot be sold across the hop.
With Farmer Girl Meats, Moore strives to make eating meat a “lifestyle choice”—a choice that is grounded in good health, accessibility, and pride. All of the meat, for example, is “clean” (no antibiotics, growth hormones, steroids, or fillers), healthy (her ground beef is “better than Greek yogurt” in terms of calories, protein, Omega 3’s, and fat), and “yummy” (it has “depth of flavor,” thanks to the grasses on which the animals graze). With home delivery, the meat is accessible and convenient, and the fact the animals are raised and slaughtered humanely takes what Moore calls the “shame” out of the equation. “We should be feeding our kids this, not walking away from it,” she advised.
What about the higher prices attached to artisanal meat? “Well,” Moore stated, “it’s the difference between drinking a Natural Light that came off the plant line, and they produce a million a week, or a Chestnut-Wingnut-Brewery-Octoberfest, one-time-release, craft beer.” She continued, “The price difference is because we hand raise it—there’s so much labor involved. The factory line cannot produce this kind of product,” stressing again that it’s “not a commodity.”
Because grass-fed beef is leaner than commercial beef, knowing how to prepare Moore’s products is essential. Toward that end, Moore includes recipes on the website, in emails, and with the boxes. Leaner meat is less forgiving than what the average consumer is used to, Moore warned, and offered tips for preparation, including “err on the side of rare,” “cut across the grain,” and “let it rest.” In the future, Moore imagines compiling a cookbook with a primer on cuts of meat.
What she’d also like to see in the future is more small producers coming together in food hubs and offering “amazing products” in the same model as Farmer Girl Meats. Who knows: if enough of these producers are women and are as savvy as Leslie Moore, then just maybe the fairer sex will get the recognition it deserves when it comes to food production and preparation.
