How Selling to Wholesome Harvest Works

We are so pleased that you are considering Wholesome Harvest as your marketing representative for your organic certified meat. Here is the process that you will be participating in:

Identity preservation

We are a farmer-owned brand, farmer controlled by its supplier-investors. If you would like to join us, please download the application materials from our website, on the “About Wholesome Harvest/Join as a Producer” page. In these materials, you will be sharing with us

1. A copy of annual organic certificate for the ranch where the animals lived/finished
2. A farmer biography and pasture system affidavit signed by the producer/finisher
3. A photo of farm family outside or farmer doing chores

The information you provide will be used online and in marketing efforts. We will protect your privacy just as you see online on our “meet the producer” page. For example, it could say “Bob and his wife farm in Southern Minnesota.” We won’t be sharing information that would allow the public to bother or visit you.

Our identity preservation commitments allow you to direct market your products. . .you will have a unique ID on the package that allows your customer to trace their dinner back to the story about your farm on the Wholesome Harvest website.

We tell the story of the producer who grew the animals on our website. So if the producer has a “silent partner”/ investor who never had the animals under his care or on his ranch, then we would tell the story of the producer and not the silent partner. If it is a ranch with ranch hands, we can tell the story of the ranch owner and the ranch. If it is a "sharecrop" arrangement where both partners want to share their stories, that is ok too. We’d like you to update your photo and bio yearly. Amish families can opt to have a landscape photo substituted to honor their religious requirements for modesty.

Production planning and Contracts

We use a production form that is the way you communicate your production plans to us. You can print out this form by downloading it from our website, on the “About Wholesome Harvest/Join as a Producer” page. In this table, you will be sharing with us number of animals and estimated months they will be at slaughter weight and other production details. Please go ahead and share your one to two year plan. After you return it to us, we will confirm if we can market 100% of your production plan and make our commitment in writing.

If there isn’t an active production cluster in your region, we encourage you to help us identity other producers and a USDA processing plant so that Wholesome Harvest would be able to service your neighborhood.

Scheduling the Processing

We will call you as your estimated slaughter month gets closer to mutually pick a week for a slaughter appointment, typically 90 days in advance of slaughter date. You will be responsible to deliver the animals to the processing plant. Wholesome Harvest will be responsible to arrange the details of the butchering instructions, paying the processor and quality control of packaging. Please stay in contact with us if you sense that the slaughter date needs to be changed due to growth rate, or there is concern about animal quality.

Getting Paid

Wholesome Harvest is an organic certified handler. This means our systems and paper trail had to be audited and approved by our certifying agency. Our systems are to ensure that meat from animals that are not actually organic certified do not end up in our inventory-- accidentally or due to fraud. The way we know that each animal is certified is by the organic Transaction Certificate (“TC”) that you provide to us. This TC triggers our ability to put it into inventory and “officially” buy it. Provided that your animals meet the specs previously agreed upon and you provide a TC, consider the meat sold. However, if you cannot provide a TC for the meat you deliver to the processor or don’t meet the specs, you will need to pick it up and be responsible for the processing costs.

The farmer-owners have decided to pay themselves net 30 days. As we are small family farmers and not factory farmers, there is a seasonality in our slaughter needs, so there is a requirement for Wholesome Harvest to have a large inventory carrying cost. Wholesome Harvest accommodates the need of the small producer to deliver meat sporadically so Wholesome Harvest pays storage on the frozen meat, so that it is always in stock for year-round sales. These payment terms are a way that the farmers acknowledge the inventory carrying costs, plus contribute to the health of the organization in a general way.

Getting Involved

Wholesome Harvest wants your involvement in the organization. If you would like to be involved beyond being a supplier, there are a number of ways you can get involved: serve on a production standards or price setting committee, participate at an international tradeshow, participate in a store demo, work as a part-time sales person in the nearby metropolitan market, run for a board seat, mentor a new organic farmer. When you offer to participate in an activity that requires travel and out of pocket expenses, they are reimbursed. Additionally wages are paid for producers who participate in professional activities like demos or tradeshows. Wholesome Harvest is your brand with support staff, so that your products can continued to be direct marketed by you, and continue to tell your story. . .just with the well-deserved marketing support that allows you to sit on the front porch a little bit more, hopefully.