USDA Rural Development Invests More Than $408,000 to Assist South Dakota Rural Meat Processors

Nov 06, 2026

U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development recently announced $57 million through the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program. USDA Rural Development South Dakota State Director Lorraine Polak today announced two South Dakota processors will receive a combined $408,410 to expand their capacity and create new and better markets.

“This funding will help our small and regional processors expand and become more efficient in their operations, and this ultimately provides our producers more opportunity and more choices of where they take their beef. But also then to provide a good quality product in our communities,” said Polak. [Polak Audio, MP3, 16s]

The investments in South Dakota are:

Very Good Meat Company LLC will receive $224,292 to expand beef processing and value-added product capacity by purchasing a patty machine, a beef stick stuffer, and rollstock packaging machine.

Source : usda.gov

Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment