S. Dakota Is Bullish on Idea Of Carving Luxury Beef Niche ~ Officials Hope to Improve Declining Rural Economy

Across the Great Plains, the story is as familiar and as mournful as the unremitting prairie wind. Rural schools are closing, small towns are dying and young people are in ruinously short supply, having run off to cities rather than stay home to take over daddy’s cow farm.

South Dakota is trying to give this story a happier ending. This spring the legislature passed and the governor signed a first-in-the-nation law that catapults the state into the luxury beef business.

The goal is to reinvent South Dakota beef as a gourmet foodstuff for upscale, socially conscious meat lovers. In effect, the state intends to drive a steak — a homegrown, environmentally correct, premium-priced steak — through the heart of its demographic decline. If all goes according to plan, increased profits from the steaks will stay home on the farm — and so will more of the kids.

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601345.html