ZIV MATALONConsultant & Management Ltd
Vertical integration

One chain from grain
to milk and meat

Crops and livestock in a single business. Cows eat feed from your own fields, milk goes to processing, bull calves to the feedlot, and manure back to the fields.

The chain

How it fits together

01 · Field

Feed crops

Maize, wheat, barley, grasses. Crop rotation on a large enough land base.

02 · Feed

Feed centre

Storage of every ingredient and a TMR ration for each group. Surplus is sold.

03 · Milk

Dairy farm

Loose-housing barns, three milkings a day, digital records.

03 · Beef

Beef farm

Bull calves from the dairy fattened over 13 months.

04 · Processing

Dairy plant

Own or partner plant, to the client's recipes or our own.

04 · Processing

Meat plant

Slaughter, cutting, cold chain.

05 · Market

Finished products

Milk, cheese, yoghurt, fresh meat, sold through your own shops or retail chains.

Closed loop: manure becomes biogas for electricity and compost that replaces chemical fertiliser in the fields. Solar panels on the barn roofs give the farm its own electricity.

Why it pays

Seven reasons to build an integration

  1. Your own feed

    The quality and cost of feed, the largest expense, are under your control and independent of the market.

  2. Enough land

    A large land base allows proper crop rotation and room to grow with the herd.

  3. Most value from each grain

    Grain becomes a high-value product instead of a raw commodity.

  4. Israeli know-how

    Technology and specialists from a country with one of the highest milk yields in the world.

  5. Self-sustaining

    By the end of the project the business is independent, profitable and fully integrated.

  6. Extra revenue

    The feed centre sells surplus, bull calves from the dairy become beef, and manure becomes compost and biogas.

  7. Free electricity

    Solar panels on the barn roofs and biogas from manure cut energy costs.

Timing

A project unfolds over 2–3 years

  1. Financing, design, first crops and construction of the feed centre.

  2. Farm construction completed, herd arrives, first feed sales.

  3. The whole complex reaches design capacity; crop area expands.

Track record

Integrations we have built

  • 5,000cows, 4 dairy plants, a meat plant and about 100 shops: the Family Capital integration, Russia
  • 5,000 ha2,000 cows, 2,000 goats, 2,000 bulls and a 20,000-tonne dairy plant: project for Agricultiva, Cyprus (2016)
  • 100,000 haof field crops and 10 farms with 15,000 head: the RAV Agro-Pro holding, Russia

Thinking about a full-cycle complex?

We will help you assemble the chain from field to shelf and work out its economics.

Discuss a project →