In baseball, they call it “small ball.” Be it by walks, bunts, steals, or singles, the idea is that a series of more measured, incremental steps is a more successful path to home base than swinging for the fences. Of course, who doesn’t love seeing a home run or a grand slam?

Like America’s pastime, business success arises from a combination of making careful calculations and taking risks. Meat processors know all too well that even starting small requires a hell of a lot of capital — and leverage.

Still, more and more of the little guys are coming to bat. Where the big boys have, over decades, come to overtake the field on economies of size, their smaller counterparts are suiting up again and trying to fill in the gaps. Time will tell if we’re seeing the construction of a winning rotation, or a short-lived collapse in a field of dreams.

The Biden administration is betting on the underdogs, having made available more than $1 billion in order for new players to join the game (or existing ones to up theirs). This, at the same time that the executive and legislative branches take a bat to industry giants — and consolidation. COVID-19 drew a line in the sandlot, the thinking goes, and exposed a vulnerability in the meat supply chain.

And, if conversations at recent industry events are any indication, the infusion of federal dollars into the “local” movement sure has fans on the meat processing equipment manufacturing side, as small players like Dewig Meats (Company Profile) and Bruce Dunlop (Thought Leader) suddenly find themselves with beefed-up budgets. “The industry’s changing,” one supplier told me at FPSA’s annual meeting.

I’ve got no direct skin in the game. So, whether it is or, ultimately, isn’t materially changing, this still all makes for interesting dynamics to cover from up here in the press box. I do have some questions, though:

Would this investment have happened without the government’s help? Are its one-time loan amounts enough? Why is there still no annual federal budget appropriation for such assistance? Will new technologies emerge to replace existing processes at a lower price tag? Will efforts to hire and train staff pan out, given a tight labor pool? Is the timing right, given high input costs and reduced animal production? And how will producer-led operations succeed where they’ve failed in the past (look for coverage on this in our June issue)?

Economists like Azzeddine Azzam, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, are curious, too. USDA has granted him more than $203,000 to explore other questions — such as whether adding local or regional packing plants will increase the pandemic-borne concept of market “resilience.”

It’s a new dimension to a discussion that, until now, has centered on the critical trade-off between potential market power and the cost efficiencies that it provides.

Critical, too, is the affordable meat that has resulted — and become an expectation of the vast majority of U.S. consumers.

If this is a new ballgame, which side is their money on?

Editor's note: This article ran as the Editorial in the May issue of Meatingplace magazine.

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