Upcoming Event:
July 28th Gathering for Grass Fed
Allegheny Grass Fed is officially available in stores! We invite you to our inaugural sale of Western PA, grass-fed beef to feed your family and support local farmers. Join us at O’Neil’s Quality Foods from 11am-2pm at 10929 US-322 Shippenville PA where farmers of the cooperative will be on site to answer questions for consumers or interested growers. Following the event Allegheny Grass Fed beef will be available for sale at O’Neil’s Quality Foods with more sites available in the coming months
Event Agenda:
11:30 - Welcoming statements and introduction to the co-op
11:45 - Ribbon Cutting of first sale
12:00 - Elected Official and Representatives remarks
12:30 - Q&A with Co-op members
1:30 - PA Department of Agriculture Secretary Redding remarks
Our Mission
Allegheny Grass-Fed is a producer and marketing cooperative providing consumers with 100% grass-fed meat that is locally produced in western Pennsylvania. All farmers use ecologically regenerative farming practices on their farms and hand raise their livestock under a set criteria of animal welfare production protocols.
01 / Ecologically Regenerative
02 / Healthy Soil
03 / Local
We not only want to take care of our animals but also the land. We want to protect the environment by keeping the soil covered with plants and keeping a natural, healthy diet for our animals. We can improve the landscape through our farming practices without using intensive inputs on other farms.
We use intensive rotational grazing which builds biodiversity through various native plant species. The soil is able to retain more moisture and capture carbon from the atmosphere and provide an excellent diet for the livestock. The animals and the soil benefit from the free range, pasture grazing.
The meat that we sell is grown in western Pennsylvania. The animals are harvested and processed in Western Pennsylvania. We are looking to focus sales in western Pennsylvania and enter new markets across the state.
Meet Allegheny Grass-Fed
OUR STORY
The concept began when a soil scientist at Penn State University, Sjoerd Duiker was studying soil health at a farm in Forest County, PA owned by Russ Wilson. The soil was very healthy and Russ had been able to improve the soil health but introducing rotational intensive grazing for his herd of beef cattle. However, Russ was not receiving a premium by raising his beef in this sustainable way. He did not have the time or the skills to do marketing to reach the consumers that would prefer beef raised by only consuming grass. A grant was secured by Sjoerd Duiker from the USDA Rural Development department to form a group of farmers to put together a marketing cooperative to market grass-fed meat.
OUR VISION
Our vision is to create a marketing cooperative of farmers that raise their animals through grazing. The farmers will be following a production protocol to raise their animals and certified for Grass-Fed and Animal Welfare under our strict production protocol. We will market meat from these farmers at a premium price to compensate them for raising their animals in a ecologically regenerative way while improving and maintaining soil health. The animals will be harvested and packaged by a USDA certified butcher/processor to be sold under a USDA approved label.
OUR CERTIFICATIONS
The animals raised under the Allegheny Grass-Fed Production Protocol will be certified under our production protocol policy and our farmers will be physically audited at least once a year according to our set of published standards.