“Making It Work” is a collection is about small-business house owners striving to endure exhausting 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 go away 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 p.c of the meat bought by Montana households is raised and processed regionally, in line with estimates from Highland Economics, a consulting agency. As is true in the remainder of the nation, many Montanans as an alternative eat beef from as far away as Brazil.

Right here’s a standard destiny of a cow that begins out on Montana grass: Will probably 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 method — and, say, promote their beef regionally, as an alternative of as nameless commodities crisscrossing the nation — are Davids in a swarm of Goliaths.

“The meat packers have numerous management,” mentioned Neva Hassanein, a College of Montana professor who research sustainable meals programs. “They have a tendency to affect an amazing quantity all through the availability chain.” For the nation’s ranchers, whose earnings have shrunk over time, she mentioned, “It’s type of a entice.”

Cole Mannix is making an attempt to flee that entice.

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 beginning calves, guiding cattle into the excessive nation on horseback. He desires to ensure the subsequent era, the sixth, has the identical alternative.

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

Whereas many Montana ranchers promote their calves into the multibillion-dollar industrial machine once they’re lower than a 12 months outdated, by no means to see or revenue from them once more, Previous Salt’s livestock by no means go away the corporate’s fingers. The cattle are raised by Previous Salt’s 4 member ranches, slaughtered and processed at its meatpacking facility, and offered by means 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 method — by which an organization controls numerous parts 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 mentioned, referring to the corporate’s sizable debt. “We’re actually making an attempt to invent one thing new.”

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

It will have been a lot less complicated for Previous Salt to open only a meat processing facility, as some ranchers have, and never hassle with eating places and occasions. (In actual fact, that’s the place a lot of the nationwide consideration has targeted: The White Home not too long ago dedicated $1 billion to unbiased meat processors, citing the main meatpackers’ lack of competitors.)

However Mr. Mannix mentioned that might not have addressed the opposite situation that ranchers face: problem accessing distributors and prospects. “It doesn’t matter you probably have a pleasant processing facility when you can’t promote the product,” he mentioned. “You possibly can’t rebuild the meals system by simply throwing a bunch of cash at one element of that meals system.”

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

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

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

This restaurant-slash-butchery is Previous 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 12 months. That’s along with the corporate’s meat processing facility and subscription meat program.

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

Whereas Mr. Mace desires all of Previous Salt’s outfits to show a revenue, their larger objective is serving as advertising autos 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, Previous Salt’s aim is to promote meat to 10,000 households across the nation every year, up from round 800 now. It gained’t be straightforward: People are used to buying floor chuck from the grocery retailer, not from an internet site.

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

That issues to Mr. Mannix. He handpicked Previous 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 ideas that seeks to replenish soils and lessen cattle’s environmental impact.

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

That’s why Previous Salt’s ranchers personal the vast majority of the corporate and share within the earnings. “We didn’t need to be a meat firm that buys livestock from ranchers and, finally, because it grows, has an incentive to pay as little as it might probably for these livestock,” Mr. Mannix mentioned. “That leaves much less cash to pay for the time that it takes to actually look after ecosystems.”

Uniting 4 ranches beneath one model has additionally allowed the members to pool their merchandise and advertising assets, relatively than compete in opposition to each other.

“It takes some boldness to do what they’re doing, however we want individuals out entrance like that to point out the way in which,” mentioned Dr. Hassanein, the College of Montana professor. Although it could appear ironic, on condition that beef manufacturing accounts for practically 9 percent of worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions, she mentioned she supported these ranches exactly as a result of she cares about wildlife and the setting.

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

That’s a query a lot of Previous 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 Previous Salt’s board, put it, “It’s clear from all angles that we will’t preserve doing what we’ve been doing, in any other case we gained’t have a ranch to move off to the subsequent era.”

“We’re making an attempt to chart a brand new mannequin,” he mentioned. “We’re actually swinging for the fences.”