Off to Market?
Chapter officials hopeful for local sheep processing plant

Area ranchers may soon have a local outlet for their sheep as the City of Gallup has approved a propsed meat packaging plant for Industry Drive in Gallup. Mike Minifie of Western Way Custom Meat in Moriarity says the plant would look to local sheep ranchers to supply them. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Cecelia Whitetail Eagle remembers when the Ramah Navajo used to raise over 5,000 head of sheep a year.

But after years of drought, the Navajo Nation's forced herd reductions, and a market for lamb that's driven prices as low as 75 cents a pound, the local sheep population has fallen dramatically. When local ranchers take their sheep to auction this October, Eagle, the Ramah Chapter's executive director, figures they'll have fewer than 200 head to sell off.

"The numbers have just fallen tremendously," she said.

But with some help from the City of Gallup, the State of New Mexico, and a meat processing company out of Moriarty, the chapter hopes to bring the herds of yore back. Western Way Custom Meats wants to open a second plant in Gallup. City officials say it could be up and running within six months.

Losing tradition
When Eagle looks at the falling numbers, she sees the decline of a Navajo institution.

"For many old people, and even some young people, having sheep is something they've done all their lives," she said. "It's in Navajo culture, it's even in our stories ... so it really goes back to tradition."

She blames much of the decline on falling prices. The harder it gets for a Navajo rancher to make money raising sheep, the greater the chances he'll move on to something else. The chapter's hope is that a local plant will pay more by cutting out the middle man.

The way it works now, Eagle said, local ranchers sell most of their sheep to buyers from Roswell. Those buyers sell the sheep to Western Way. The company then processes or slaughters and packs the meat in Moriarty before shipping it to stores on the reservation.

"In this case," Eagle said, "the plant will be in Gallup, it will buy from local producers, it will be slaughtered there, and it will be sold there ... so we don't have to go through Roswell."

"I hear that all the time," said Roy Kady.

As board president of Navajo Lifeways, a non-profit group that represents Navajo sheep and goat producers, he's heard many ranchers complain about the middle man. Since switching to churro sheep 10 years ago, he's been selling his animals directly to restaurants in Utah and Arizona, but he knows what it's like. Before the switch, he sold his sheep at auctions in Cortez.

But even Kady hopes to get something out of a plant in Gallup.

The restaurant he sells to in Winslow doesn't want the meat processed in Utah, and the nearest plant in New Mexico isn't certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which means it can't be sold out of state. So Kady ends up driving his sheep from Teec Nos Pos to Chino Valley on the west side of Arizona an eight hour trip at least and pools with other ranchers when he can. A USDA-certified plant in Gallup would mean a shorter, and cheaper, trip.

It could do the same for ranchers for over a hundred miles around.

But the Ramah Navajo see much more in the plant than a tie to tradition. As in any good business plan, they see a chance to create jobs and make money.

Navajo preference
The chapter would neither own nor operate the plant, at least not at first. That would be Western Way's job. But in a recent letter to the city, owner Mike Minifie promises to give Navajos preference when it comes time to filling the 30 positions he figures he'll need by the time the plant is up to processing 2,000 head of sheep a week. He would also train them to run the plant and, "after several years ... under reasonable terms," sell it to the chapter.

Minifie declined to comment for this story. But in his letter, he writes of "branding" the plant's product as Navajo, thanks to the Navajo labor that will go into it. He hopes that will make it popular with Navajo shoppers.

The chapter wanted only a mobile processing unit at first. But after a feasibility study concluded that wouldn't work, it turned to Western Way.

"It's very difficult to do economic development in our community because we're a ways away from the main economic areas," Eagle said. "We found we have to partner with outside companies or we have to go outside our community."

In this case the chapter has done both. And to solidify the partnership it's putting $10,000 into the project.

$1.2 million venture
According to the fact sheet the chapter and company have put together, that's only a fraction of the $1.2 million the venture will cost to pull off. The city is putting in $175,000 worth of state appropriations. Another $15,000 will come from the Manufacturing Exterior Partnership, a program of Sandia Labs. And Western Way will put in another $300,000. City Manager Eric Honeyfield said the rest would probably have to come from the New Mexico Legislature.

The city also has another $50,000 to spend fixing up the old slaughterhouse the plant would move into on the west end of town, money it put aside for just such an occasion when it bought the building in 2005 as a future business incubator.

Honeyfield believes the plant will be a good fit for Gallup. The City Council agreed and approved the project last week, taking on fiscal agent duties for all state funds at the same time.

"Too many times we bend over backwards for an industry to move here that doesn't," he said.

He's hopeful that won't happen this time.

"It's an industry that fits here that once flourished, and maybe we can bring it back," he said.