Producer Partnership in Livingston is among many champions of the local food system. The new podcast Food, Montana seeks to elevate the stories of these individuals.
A Podcast Digging into Montana’s Food System
Matt Pierson walks up the front steps of Producer Partnership, the meat processing facility he founded east of Livingston in 2020. He pauses before opening the door.
“The number one thing we could do as a society is start to ask where our food comes from,” he says. “And the moment the consumer does that—when they start demanding to know where their food really comes from—it will revolutionize agriculture in our country overnight.”
It’s just after first cutting, and Pierson’s hayfields are still green. Five miles south, the Absarokas rise 5,000 feet above the valley. Across the Frontage Road, trucks rumble by on I-90.
Pierson opens the door, and 5-below-zero air hits us in the face. Neatly stacked boxes of frozen meat are labeled for schools and senior centers in Joliet, Livingston, Big Timber, Gardiner, and Big Sandy, alongside entire pallets designated for the Montana Food Bank Network.
The only nonprofit, federally inspected processor in the country, Producer Partnership offers tax incentives to the ranchers who donate animals, plus the chance to contribute to a vision of providing free Montana-grown meat to every school, food pantry, and senior center statewide.
Do stories like Pierson’s motivate you to participate in a more resilient and community-centric food system? Me too. Which is why my friend Jeremy Nadison and I are hosting a new podcast called Food, Montana.
We launched the show in May of 2024, aiming to help strengthen local and regional food systems by exploring how Montanans are creating on-the-ground solutions.
Every other week, we’ve spoken with folks working in community food systems, among them a baker, a farmer, a professor, and a supermodel turned purveyor of local meats.
Looking back at our first handful of episodes, there’s a theme emerging: consistent action.
“Everyone we’ve spoken with has identified a need, problem, or opportunity, and is addressing it,” Nadison says. “They’re not just talking about it or thinking about it. They are building the world as we might idealize it, and not just idealizing it.”
That’s the world Matt Pierson (who we haven’t recorded with—yet!) and many others in Montana are working on. It’s one in which markets serve both the people who grow food and those who eat it, as well as the ecosystems that support us all.
As the long-time Gallatin Valley farmer Becky Weed says, “This is not a zero-sum game.”
- Food, Montana is available on many podcast platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
