How we check farm listings and prices.

Why publish this

We track 397 farms. 155 publish enough detail for a full page, and 26 publish a bulk price we can fairly compare with another farm’s. We list the rest too, rather than make them say more than they actually said.

Each detailed farm page keeps the useful buying facts together: what the farm sells, breed and feed claims, pickup or delivery, ordering details, published prices, and source notes.

What stays out of the comparison

We leave the comparable price blank when the farm doesn’t say which weight the price is based on, when the number is a deposit or only part of the bill, or when a package total comes with no hanging weight. The published figure still appears on the farm page without a guessed conversion.

252 farms publish no price at all. 8 publish a package total instead of a per-pound rate. A blank is a finding, not missing homework.

Resellers are shown separately. Shelterbelt Farm publishes a price we could calculate, but it buys and resells other farms’ cattle rather than raising its own. Its price stays on its own page instead of appearing in the farm-direct comparison.

Quarterly price checks, open corrections

We re-check prices every quarter, and every farm page shows the date we last looked. A dead link means a page moved, not that a farm closed.

A farm can correct its name, location, feed wording, breed, price basis, processing charge, source link, or business context through the listing update form. We check every submission against the farm’s own site before changing anything.

We track 397 farms today. Corrections are kept alongside the original source, so you can always see what changed.

What you may see on a farm page

Comparable full cost

The farm publishes a hanging-weight rate for one or more stated share sizes and enough processing information to show a complete per-pound figure. No share-size conversion is made.

Farm-published figure

The original number is useful, but its weight basis or included costs differ from the comparison above.

Planning estimate

A clearly disclosed allowance fills one missing input. Confirm the complete quote with the farm instead of ordering from the estimate.

Contact for price

The farm may sell beef without posting a current price online.

None of these labels grades the beef or determines whether an offer is good value for a particular buyer.

Before you order

Map pins show a town or county, not a street address, and approximate ones are marked. We don’t track what’s in stock.

Prices change, and we flag any we know is from an older year. Confirm price, processing, pickup, and how much beef you’ll actually take home with the farm before you order.

Run a farm, or spot something wrong? Send us an update.

One person, in West Hartford

Local Beef Index is written and maintained by Justin Feldstein in West Hartford, Connecticut.

It started as a shopping problem. I wanted to buy beef raised closer to home, and I wasn’t ready to commit to half an animal and a freezer I didn’t own. I wanted a few steaks and some ground beef. I couldn’t work out who sold that, or why one farm’s beef cost more than another’s, or what I was actually being quoted on the rare occasion a price appeared at all.

So I started writing down what each farm published and where it said it. That record became this site. Every figure here traces to a farm’s own words with the date it was checked, and where a farm doesn’t publish enough to compare, the page says so rather than guessing.

No farm pays to be listed, and none can pay to rank. There is nothing to rank.

Questions, corrections, or a farm we’ve missed: send an update.