Angus cows stand in a field at Stoneyview Ranch in Heffley Creek.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Harley Jette

Some shoppers at major grocery outlets in Kamloops and the Okanagan are suffering from sticker shock when looking at the costs of meat these days, especially beef, and the staggering prices are prompting more interest in sourcing the protein locally.

Harley Jette has been raising and butchering Angus beef cattle for a couple of decades on his Stoneyview Ranch in Heffley Creek.

“Just this year alone we have more customers coming and I’m having to turn them away onto other beef producers in our valley,” he said. “I think it’s a combination of skyrocketing beef prices and people wanting to know where their food comes from.”

Sourcing meat locally has numerous benefits including supporting local farmers, knowing where food comes from, and often buying free ranged, ethically raised animals.

It's also possible to buy local beef at a cheaper price per pound.

“The costs of beef at retail outlets is more, you’ve got to think there are multiple middle men in there,” Jette said. “To get beef to Costco there was a purchaser that bought it from the farmer, then it’s sent to a feedlot, then a packer and then grocery stores. There is also trucking involved, my gut says it’s cheaper to go to a farmer and buy it.”

He sells his butchered steers by the quarters, halves, three quarters and whole, which means the cost is greater up front.

“Where people gasp is... if I sell a side of beef for $3,000 they’re like ‘oh my god,’ but when you work it backwards it's about $7.50 to $8 per pound on hanging weight,” he said.

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The butchered animal ends up weighing between 750 and 800 pounds once inedible parts are removed, which is what a customer pays for. 

“You’re getting hamburger for eight bucks, your rib steaks, your roast, it’s eight bucks across the board,” Jette said. “I think when you tell people the initial cost, they go back to Costco and buy that four pack of steaks for $89, but a half a beef or a family of five like ours will last us an entire year.”

Jette said it’s common for customers to get together and split an order.

“If you buy a quarter of an animal you’re getting everything from hamburger to New York steaks, ribs, T-bones and round roasts,” he said. “If you buy the half, you cut that animal down the centre and get everything.”

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Meat at mainstream grocery outlets saw the highest increase in food costs in the province between Dec. 2023 and Dec. 2024 at 4.2%, according to BC Stats consumer price index. Fresh and frozen beef costs led the way with a price increase of 13.2%.

A report by Statistics Canada on prices of different cuts of beef in retail stores in BC between November 2024 and December 2024 show beef striploin cuts at $14.45 per pound, top sirloin at $10.56 per pound and beef rib cuts at $15.31 per pound.

Jette points to low herd numbers in Canada and the United States, and the difference in the dollar between the two countries as some reasons for the increased costs of beef.

“The cattle herd volume in Canada is at an all time low in over five decades,” he said. “The American side is down drastically due to drought and hard winters through 2017 and 2018. They had a March time blizzard in the Dakotas that killed a drastic number of calves, so that put a cripple on the US side of it.”

The difference between the American and Canadian dollar makes it cheaper for Americans to come across the border to buy cattle and ship them south.

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An added benefit to sourcing beef locally is ethical animal rearing.

Jette works to give them a life that is humane as possible. The herd spends all summer at a higher elevation and are brought back in fall to have calves.

“We put our animals out on grass for the vast majority of their life, we bring them in for their last two or three months and feed them quality sourced grain,” he said. “Our animals are rotated and grazed in a fashion where a pasture will be left untouched for a year, so any issues with parasites has been eliminated.”

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He's one of a group of cattle ranchers in the area and the farmers buy animals from each other.

“That’s a lot less stress on the animal than taking them to BC Livestock in town where they’ll be transported to Alberta,” he said. “Buying local means the animals don’t have to leave the farm. It’s got to be less stressful.”

Jette grew up on Stoneyview Ranch before he went to university for Engineering in Kentucky where the school had agricultural programs he found himself interested in.

“I learned different ways to farm and ranch and keep cattle in terms of being more environmentally friendly,” he said. “No fault to the older generation but we’ve learned there are better ways of doing things.

“That fuelled the drive to come home and implement this stuff, I hit the ground running.”

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He and his wife started raising sheep and small livestock at first, then started into cattle with a purebred herd of Angus.

Jette juggles the ranch operations with his full-time construction job in Kamloops as the project manager and estimator for Rivermist Excavating, a civil contractor in the city.

He has beef customers throughout the province and can be contacted through his Facebook page here.

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