“Making It Work” is a collection is about small-business homeowners striving to endure arduous instances.

Whereas many individuals can conjure up romantic visions of a Montana ranch — huge valleys, chilly streams, snow-capped mountains — few perceive what occurs when the cattle depart these pastures. Most of them, it seems, don’t keep in Montana.

Even right here, in a state with practically twice as many cows as individuals, solely round 1 % of the meat bought by Montana households is raised and processed regionally, in response to estimates from Highland Economics, a consulting agency. As is true in the remainder of the nation, many Montanans as a substitute eat beef from as far away as Brazil.

Right here’s a standard destiny of a cow that begins out on Montana grass: It will likely be purchased by one of many 4 dominant meatpackers — JBS, Tyson Meals, Cargill and Marfrig — which course of 85 percent of the nation’s beef; transported by an organization like Sysco or US Meals, distributors with a mixed worth of over $50 billion; and offered at a Walmart or Costco, which collectively absorb roughly half of America’s food dollars. Any ranchers who need to get away from this technique — and, say, promote their beef regionally, as a substitute of as nameless commodities crisscrossing the nation — are Davids in a swarm of Goliaths.

“The meat packers have a number of management,” stated Neva Hassanein, a College of Montana professor who research sustainable meals techniques. “They have an inclination to affect an amazing quantity all through the availability chain.” For the nation’s ranchers, whose income have shrunk over time, she stated, “It’s type of a lure.”

Cole Mannix is attempting to flee that lure.

Mr. Mannix, 40, tends to wax philosophical. (He as soon as considered changing into a Jesuit priest.) Like members of his household have since 1882, he grew up ranching: baling hay, serving to to start calves, guiding cattle into the excessive nation on horseback. He desires to verify the following technology, the sixth, has the identical alternative.

So, in 2021, Mr. Mannix co-founded Old Salt Co-op, an organization that goals to upend the best way individuals purchase meat.

Whereas many Montana ranchers promote their calves into the multibillion-dollar industrial machine after they’re lower than a yr outdated, by no means to see or revenue from them once more, Outdated Salt’s livestock by no means depart the corporate’s arms. The cattle are raised by Outdated Salt’s 4 member ranches, slaughtered and processed at its meatpacking facility, and offered by way of its ranch-to-table eating places, group occasions and web site. The ranchers, who’ve possession within the firm, revenue at each stage.

The technical time period for this strategy — during which an organization controls varied components of its provide chain — is vertical integration. It’s not one thing many small meat companies strive, because it requires an enormous quantity of upfront capital.

“It’s a scary time,” Mr. Mannix stated, referring to the corporate’s sizable debt. “We’re actually attempting to invent one thing new.”

However, he added, “Irrespective of how dangerous it’s to begin a enterprise like Outdated Salt, the established order is riskier.”

It might have been a lot less complicated for Outdated Salt to open only a meat processing facility, as some ranchers have, and never trouble with eating places and occasions. (In truth, that’s the place a lot of the nationwide consideration has centered: The White Home just lately dedicated $1 billion to unbiased meat processors, citing the most important meatpackers’ lack of competitors.)

However Mr. Mannix stated that may not have addressed the opposite challenge that ranchers face: issue accessing distributors and clients. “It doesn’t matter when you’ve got a pleasant processing facility for those who can’t promote the product,” he stated. “You possibly can’t rebuild the meals system by simply throwing a bunch of cash at one part of that meals system.”

Outdated Salt is his try and rebuild the entire darn factor.

And persons are taking discover. “Outdated Salt is a beacon,” stated Robin Kelson, govt director of Abundant Montana, a nonprofit group selling native meals. “They’re exhibiting the remainder of us that by stacking enterprises, by collaborating in artistic methods, it’s attainable to make the system work.”

On a latest Saturday, downtown Helena’s latest restaurant, the Union, was buzzing. A wood-fired grill sizzled as diners ate steaks and quick ribs; up entrance, a butcher case gleamed with bacon and breakfast sausages. All of it got here from Outdated Salt’s member ranches.

This restaurant-slash-butchery is Outdated Salt’s newest enterprise. It joins the Outpost, a burger stand inside a 117-year-old bar, and the Old Salt Festival, a food- and music-filled celebration of sustainable agriculture on the Mannix ranch in late June, now in its second yr. That’s along with the corporate’s meat processing facility and subscription meat program.

Andrew Mace, Outdated Salt’s co-founder and culinary director, most likely wouldn’t suggest beginning 5 companies in three years. However he stated this was all a part of the corporate’s “very formidable plan to reimagine the native meat economic system.”

Whereas Mr. Mace desires all of Outdated Salt’s outfits to show a revenue, their better goal is serving as advertising and marketing automobiles for the meat subscription service: for diners to fall in love with the Union’s rib-eye, after which signal as much as get the corporate’s “steak and chop bundle” delivered each month.

Within the subsequent 5 years, Outdated Salt’s objective is to promote meat to 10,000 households across the nation annually, up from round 800 now. It received’t be simple: People are used to buying floor chuck from the grocery retailer, not from a web site.

“It simply takes rather a lot to pry into individuals’s spending habits,” Mr. Mace stated, “and get them to grasp that you simply’re not simply shopping for meat, you’re investing in native landscapes.”

That issues to Mr. Mannix. He handpicked Outdated Salt’s members from more than 9,000 ranches throughout the state as a result of they share his dedication to regenerative ranching, a set of rules that seeks to replenish soils and lessen cattle’s environmental impact.

His overarching objective is placing extra money into these ranchers’ arms to allow them to put extra money and time into stewarding their lands. (Altogether, Outdated Salt’s ranches handle greater than 200,000 acres, a parcel bigger than Shenandoah Nationwide Park.)

That’s why Outdated Salt’s ranchers personal nearly all of the corporate and share within the income. “We didn’t need to be a meat firm that buys livestock from ranchers and, in the end, because it grows, has an incentive to pay as little as it may well for these livestock,” Mr. Mannix stated. “That leaves much less cash to pay for the time that it takes to actually take care of ecosystems.”

Uniting 4 ranches underneath one model has additionally allowed the members to pool their merchandise and advertising and marketing assets, reasonably than compete towards each other.

“It takes some boldness to do what they’re doing, however we’d like individuals out entrance like that to indicate the best way,” stated Dr. Hassanein, the College of Montana professor. Although it might appear ironic, provided that beef manufacturing accounts for practically 9 percent of worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions, she stated she supported these ranches exactly as a result of she cares about wildlife and the surroundings.

“These are well-known ranches; a lot of them are award-winning conservationists,” Dr. Hassanein stated. “If they will’t survive economically, then we actually must ask ourselves what’s going to come back of their place.”

That’s a query a lot of Outdated Salt’s ranchers, who’re navigating each financial and environmental pressures, have been asking too. As Cooper Hibbard, a fifth-generation rancher and president of Outdated Salt’s board, put it, “It’s clear from all angles that we are able to’t hold doing what we’ve been doing, in any other case we received’t have a ranch to cross off to the following technology.”

“We’re attempting to chart a brand new mannequin,” he stated. “We’re actually swinging for the fences.”