Pasture profits: Raising grass-fed livestock proves lucrative for more N.C. farmers.

• Author: Martin, Edward

Tails lazily swish flies from their black coats as docile, 1,200-pound Angus cattle graze in grass up to their bellies. Carolyn Bradley is fencing this afternoon, repairing barbed-wire strands that stand between them and the steep, forested Madison County mountains.

A footpath meanders down a hillside to a deep vale and the front porch of a white, 1910 farm house. Fit and trim in her 60s, Bradley says it seems that from surrounding mountaintops she can see forever--28 peaks, including fabled Grandfather Mountain.

"This farm has been in my family as far back as records go. I grew up here, and went off to college and became a school teacher." Her parents farmed until poor health drove them off the land 20-odd years ago. Bradley and her husband Mike, an engineer, moved back to the 130-acre farm seven years ago.

Agriculture is a $92 billion annual slice of North Carolina's economy, employing one in five workers. One of the state's biggest meat producing employers is 300 miles east of Bradley's farm in Bladen County, where 4,000 employees process 35,000 hogs daily at a Smithfield Foods plant.

The Bradleys' Farm House Beef sells grass-fed beef directly to consumers who are increasingly bypassing industrial behemoths like Smithfield and the supermarkets they supply. Such pasture-to-plate farms range from beef to pork, bison, lamb, goat, poultry and other meats, but all promise more-nutritious meats and humanely raised animals, like those of the Bradleys.

Agricultural economists say the movement, also known as regenerative farming, is helping families preserve hundreds of North Carolina's 46,000 farms once destined to be parceled into lots for houses and shopping malls, swallowed by urban sprawl.

The pasture-raised movement has boomed since the COVID-19 pandemic, so much so that its success threatens to overwhelm its infrastructure. Several slaughterhouses, for example, are begging for skilled butchers and other workers to meet surging demand.

The number of Tar Heel farms certified to handle their own meat has soared in the last two decades, now totaling 1,600. Sales are believed to exceed $200 million, though it's tough to track with farms running the gamut of size and offerings.

Homesteaders and pace-setters

Farm House Beef, one of the state's largest pasture-raised operations, is about 35 miles from Hickory Nut Gap Farm in Buncombe County's Fairview community, another mountainous terrain.

There, on a recent sunny afternoon, Jamie and Amy Ager wait for their sons Cyrus, Nolin and Levi to come home from school. The couple met at nearby Warren Wilson College 20-odd years ago. The boys help on the farm, giving Jamie Ager hope that they will someday take over.

The farm has been in the Ager family since 1916. Jamie's father, John, is stepping down this year from the N.C. House of Representatives after serving since 2015. Jamie's brother, Eric, is running to succeed their father.

Hickory Nut Gap had overall revenue of $11 million last year. It produces its own grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pigs, turkeys and other animals, selling about $1.5 million through its on-farm store last year. With 18 employees, it also wholesales meat to food-service distributors such as Sysco, US Foods and Performance Food Group, a channel that has grown at a double-digit pace...