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Arapaho Ranch produces the kind of beef your inner cowboy wants to eat. With 595,000 acres sprawling across Wyoming's wild and rugged Owl Mountains, the ranch is home to native grasses, wolves, mountain lions, and grizzlies. The cattle are herded by Indian cowboys, each with his own fleet of seven horses -- one for each day of the week.

 

It's the largest certified organic cattle operation in the U.S., which isn't saying much given what's permitted under today's organic standards, which regulate an animal's diet more than its lifestyle. While organic cattle can be confined for up to eight months a year without losing their certification, the cattle at Arapaho Ranch spend their entire lives grazing outside. They follow the melting snow up the mountain in springtime and retreat to lower ground in fall. The cattle breed naturally, without the help of artificial insemination, as do the ranch horses. The word "organic," while applicable to the beef produced on Arapaho Ranch, doesn't do it justice.  

When the Arapaho Ranch, which is owned by the Northern Arapaho Tribe, made a deal to market its beef at Whole Foods, it was a dream come true: an

economically feasible way for the tribe to steward its land in an ecologically responsible way. It created a revenue stream that stands in stark contrast with gas drilling and casino gambling.  

Whole Foods celebrated the agreement with great fanfare, featuring eagle feather headdresses and traditional Arapaho prairie chicken dances in the parking lot of a Denver store. "[It] was a great idea," says David Ruedlinger, Whole Foods' meat coordinator for the Rocky Mountain region. "They could supply us with beef 52 weeks a year. Their cattle grazed year-round and knew their way around the ranch, which microclimates would have grass in winter. Everything at the ranch seemed as it should be according to Mother Nature."  

Everything, it turns out, except the bottom line. In March, barely a year into the deal, Arapaho Ranch pulled out.  

"We couldn't have asked for a better situation," explains David Stoner, general manager of the ranch. "They're beautiful stores. They presented our product beautifully. But it's a difficult product to produce. We're keeping cattle until they're 30 months old, through two winters. It takes range-fed beef that much longer to grow, and we're still three to four hundred pounds less than the ones that come out of a feedlot."  

The move to gain organic certification was a big investment for the ranch. Then the bank that helped finance the operation backed out. A sizable percentage of the meat's retail price was going to Panorama Meats, which handles the slaughter, packaging and distribution of Whole Foods' beef. The ranch was getting squeezed, Stoner says, and when the price of conventional beef shot up by 20 percent last spring, Arapaho asked Panorama for a commensurate increase in the wholesale price. Panorama declined.   

Arapaho Ranch then tried to strike a deal directly with Whole Foods. But that proposition wasn't as simple as the tribe might have hoped, according to Whole Foods' Ruedlinger.  

"They might view Panorama as a middleman, but they're more than that. Panorama provides services I can't do myself. They have a market for the bones, offal, livers, bench trim, etc. You don't see us selling tripe, tongue, or oxtail at our store, but all that stuff is marketable and should be used if you're trying to get the best carcass utilization possible. And carcass utilization is important not just for economics, but to honor the animal."  

For a large, publicly traded company like Whole Foods, it's more efficient to deal with one supplier -- Panoroma -- that works with several different producers, than to work directly with individual ranches. "In winter, sometimes inclement weather means the roads in Wyoming are closed, and we can't get the product," Ruedlinger explains, as an example of why going around Panorama to deal directly with Arapaho Ranch was a can of worms he didn't want to open.