Courtesy Photo­Image Moving cows and calves on Knopik's place.

Crossing into Nance County was like entering another country. The mile sections were replaced with meandering roads that slanted and curved with the topography, without regard to true north or south.

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There no longer was field after field of corn rows waiting for pre-planting farmwork, but instead rolling hills of pastureland studded with grazing cows and their calves. The big town on the map, Fullerton, was a spattering of houses and a Main Street with hollow-looking storefronts.

This is ranch country. Here, every man wears a cowboy hat and drives a pickup truck. Here, the grazing cow-calf herd is the only kind of production agriculture that is "sensible."

But tucked in those hills, near a spot of ground that was once the town of North Star, is a ranch like no other - North Star Neighbors, a cooperatively owned organic beef, hog, and poultry farm that defies most preconceived notions about what ranching should be, sustainable farming can be, and most of all, what the family farm is all about.

"I think 100 cows is too big," said Jim Knopik, referring to the 100 Beef Cow Ownership Advantage Program at the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture in Curtis, where he recently visited with the Dean about creating a sustainable farming program for students.

"I'd like to see farms able to raise families with 20 head, but it's hard to get there when you're not thinking that way," he said. "Once we started adding value to the production, it was a lot easier to understand."

Turning point

The origin of North Star Neighbors was a conventional farm owned by Knopik's father. Knopik joined the family operation, which also included his brothers, shortly after his wedding - renting the house next door until he and his wife, Carolyn, were able to purchase the farm in 1978.

"We were the biggest farmers west of Fullerton at that time," Knopik said, and they continued to farm conventionally, with no plans to change, until about 12 years ago.

At that time, the county was in an uproar about a 500,000-head swine operation that wanted to move in. Knopik joined his neighbors in efforts to keep the operation out.

"In doing so, we got closer to a lot of families involved in the fight and realized that what we were accusing the (big hog producers) of we were doing ourselves," he said. "When I was a kid, there was a farm on every quarter here. Now, every farm here used to be nine of those farms." The Knopik farm was no exception, having bought up several farms as it was expanding.

It was a turning point for Knopik, one that would completely change the course of his farm and his life.

"And we started going back to a more sustainable way of farming," he said.

In the beginning

The North Star Neighbors cooperative began in 1998 with seven families producing chickens.

"It was a way to get our feet wet," Knopik said. By 2000, their cooperative became a legal entity. They then added hogs and cattle to the mix.

For the first seven years, they mainly sold products through farmers markets.

"Every Saturday, we had trailers going to Grand Island, Lincoln, and Omaha. The one for Omaha had to leave by 2:30 in the morning," Carolyn said.

But the cost of fuel to drive to these farmers markets, the closest being an hour away, ate into their profits, and "we realized that was not sustainable either," Knopik said.

They had also put items in several stores in Lincoln, and sales were good - as long as someone was there giving samples. Otherwise, North Star's products didn't move because, without a taste test, the only thing selling them was the price - another marketing option proving unsustainable.

By this time, North Star Neighbors had accumulated nearly 1,000 names of customers, so instead of driving to farmers markets, they began a biweekly delivery system.

"That really went pretty well," Knopik said. Instead of having three members of their coop on the road every week, they were able to spread their workload to one driver, one in marketing, and one answering phone calls.

Then, the price of fuel shot up.

"We just didn't feel we could compete because the cost of production had to go up so much to cover the cost of fuel, so we added a $7 delivery charge to our customers' orders," Knopik said. "It didn't phase them one bit."

But the price of fuel continued increasing and North Star made the decision to go to monthly deliveries.

"Our customers are wonderful," Carolyn said. "They understood."

Today, North Star makes 40-70 deliveries a month. The average roundtrip is 425 miles, and the farthest delivery point is Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Customers make the cooperative work

North Star Neighbors enjoys great loyalty from its customers, but that's not something that just happens without planning and work, Knopik said.

"We treat our customers as joint owners of the farm," he said. "Our customers got us where we are at, anyway."

North Star asks for input from the customers before making a change and treats them like family, inviting them to the farm and getting to know them as friends. And the customers reciprocate. Carolyn told about how customers would send coffee home with her husband to keep him awake on the road, and how they would call the farm late at night to make sure he got home okay if the road conditions were poor.

An example of how North Star Neighbors worked with its customers is when Knopik was considering taking his cattle off mineral, a supplement that is usually thought of as routine in cattle production.

"We were communicating with our customers about their health problems," Knopik said. "Someone would have a food allergy or sensitivity that was traced back to what the calves ate. This was years before science even began looking at this possibility. This was 15, 20 years ago. We were long accused of making unsubstantiated claims that research is now showing to be true."

North Star Neighbors made the final decision to eliminate the mineral when Mad Cow disease was of particular concern, especially since one of the common components at the time was tied to the pathogen behind this human health worry. At the same time, Knopik had four cows die from choking on turnips, and in talking with other producers, it was suspected that the cows had overdosed on the dicalcium phosphate component of the mineral.

Taking away the mineral was a leap of faith, but one that has paid off.

Carolyn noted how the cattle have seemed gentler ever since, but what is more important is the effect on their customers: "Some said their child can eat beef again when he could never eat beef before."

Soon after, North Star also took out hormones, feed additives, and antibiotics. The result has been happier customers - and, surprisingly, healthier animals.

"We have come to believe that stress is the cause of most sickness," Knopik said, so if a producer is able to reduce the stress on the animal, which includes not feeding additives that are unnaturally compatible to the animal's system, he can avoid many of the illnesses conventional producers deal with.

Changes in the works

Another production change in the works, based on joint interest from the cooperative's customers and producers, is moving toward grass-finishing for the beef operation. Grass-finished beef is known for its nutritional benefits, and with the high cost of feed, it's good for the producer, too.

North Star Neighbors has been mob grazing for a year and a half, and is estimating needing another year and a half until the cooperative can convert fully to grass finishing. So far, mob grazing has allowed North Star Neighbors to graze up to eight months out of the year and increase the number of head by 25 percent. Knopik and his son, Tom, currently have 200 cows, plus their calves, 75 yearlings, and 50 yearling heifers - and have plans to increase the herd by another 10 percent. The majority of their 1,600-plus acres is pasture, and more cropland is being converted.

"Mob grazing worked so well last year that we didn't even use 320 acres," Knopik said. "It's more about feeding the land than it is about feeding the cows."

The goal is to get to year-round grazing, something that he estimates will take another three to five years. Currently, the four months that their herd doesn't graze here, they graze rented corn stalks.

"All the farmers around here think mob grazing is too much work. It does take a lot of work to get there, the point of being able to do this, with fencing and making sure the water is where it needs to be," Knopik said. "What they don't realize is that instead of eight herds, they're only running one and it takes a half hour to move them is all. We can also eliminate having to haul them everywhere; they can be moved from one field to the next without using fossil fuels."

There are some less apparent benefits, as well: "They are easy to keep in, too, because everyday, they're in a new place, so it's like candy to them," Knopik said. "And they eat weeds and brush: in fact, the longer they mob graze, the more we find they actually prefer weeds - they're higher in protein than grass. Long-time mob grazers worry about how to keep their weeds!"

Shared passion drives cooperative

The number-one tip that Knopik can offer about making a cooperative successful is to find producers who share the same passion and philosophies about farming and life.

"You have to have people who believe in the same things you believe in," he said. "We can't have people going off in different directions."

Planning is good, but the focus is what's more important: "Everybody believes you have to have a business plan and feasibility studies, and I suppose, but we've changed so much that if we had stuck to a business plan, we would've missed a lot of opportunities," Knopik said. "Every year, we change our plan and adjust. If we head relied on all our customers coming to the farm, we couldn't have survived as a business. If we had stayed at the farmers markets, we would've burned out."

"The most important thing is to develop a mission statement and goals," he added. "You can go outside the straight line, but you always have to come back."

Nebraska food coop

North Star Neighbors is also a pick-up point for the Nebraska Food Coop, an Internet-based marketplace that bears a lot of resemblance to the North Star Neighbors business model. In fact, Knopik is a co-founder of this innovative virtual cooperative that has since been replicated in other states.

The Nebraska Food Coop shares the same philosophy as North Star Neighbors, as an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable network of producers and consumers. The volunteer-run cooperative consists of a web-based marketplace, www.nebraskafood.org, where member consumers can buy products from member producers. The producers then work together to deliver their products to specified pick-up points.

The Nebraska Food Coop is more than providing a place for consumers to purchase local foods and for producers to sell their products locally. It's about creating a viable local food infrastructure. Knopik said the infrastructure is expanding - the delivery system now includes the eastern third of the state and an additional hub is being established in Kearney, and processors are being added to the mix such as a mobile meat processing unit that will be built in about three weeks - as is the product diversity.

"People can be more independent," Knopik said. "They don't all have to be organic or raise broilers or sell meat. They don't all have to be a certain size producer. I'd like to get to the point where the little, old lady down the street can sell a couple quarts of strawberries and be profitable."

One goal is that the Nebraska Food Coop will get to the point of sustaining itself, giving up volunteer hours - that any point, whether the delivery or the processing part, can grow enough for someone to make a business out of it.

"For example, we need a packaging facility now, so there's a job available," Knopik said. "We (Nebraska Food Coop) don't want to own everything. That's getting too close to vertical integration. We want to open avenues for new marketers and new businesses."

The next generation

This year, two of Knopik's grand-daughters and a grandson are starting their own egg business, utilizing the Nebraska Food Coop. Another grandson is trying out eco-tourism by renting out camping units in the pasture.

"It's such a good learning process for them to learn how to market their stuff," Knopik said. "I think that's why we (the agricultural industry in general) lose so many farmers - because they've lost the knowledge and means of how to market."

The cooperative model brings this back into production agriculture, and while it's a challenge for many producers, marketing is what makes the profession viable and sustainable.

"If you're working hard, why shouldn't you be entitled to live like the average of society does?" Knopik asked.

Rita Brhel is a correspondent for the Yankton Press and Dakotan newspaper. First published April 23, as part of a series of reports on cooperatives. Reprinted with permission.