The Slop Stops Here

For longtime Moore County farmers, the hard part starts tomorrow

#Opinion • 12:02 p.m. March 31, 2026

Today, March 31, is the last day of the Jack Daniel’s Cow Feeder Program.

With it ends one of the quiet arrangements that helped keep Moore County cattle farming viable for generations. Local producers long relied on distillery stillage – “slop” – as a cheap, dependable feed source that made thin margins work. Beginning tomorrow, that margin disappears.

This is not just the end of a program. It is the end of a system.

For decades, slop helped bridge the gap between rising feed costs and already-thin margins. In a county with 281 farms, where the provided material says nearly 90 percent raise animals, that mattered far beyond the feed lot. It shaped herd sizes, operating costs, and, in many cases, whether a family could stay in cattle at all.

Now that support is gone.

A Question Farmers Could Not Stop Asking

The strain was already clear last fall.

On Sept. 30, the Moore County Extension office held a farm feed solutions meeting – a well-meaning effort that, for many farmers, felt more like triage than treatment. The University of Tennessee Extension’s MANAGE team was there to do what Extension does best: help producers run numbers, think strategically, and plan for change.

But spreadsheets do not feed cows.

The room kept circling back to the same place. Not to a spreadsheet. Not to a grazing chart. To the loss itself.

The question farmers kept returning to was not only how to adjust, but why this had to happen at all. Slop had been ingrained in the way many local producers fed cattle for years. Even after knowing for a long time that the program might not last forever, many still wanted an answer that felt bigger than corporate efficiency. They wanted to know why a byproduct that had helped sustain local farms for generations was now being redirected to help fuel Brown-Forman’s growth and sustainability goals.

Farmers had their answer. It did nothing to ease the blow.

The Extension message was plain enough: change is here, and producers who intend to stay in cattle need to begin planning for it now. But no spreadsheet, no feed strategy, and no budgeting exercise could erase the deeper frustration in the room — that there is no easy replacement for what the slop provided, and no neat way to backfill it at a price many local farms can afford.

The Warning Was Not New

No wonder the frustration runs so deep.

In May 2022, it was already becoming clear that Jack Daniel’s stillage was headed toward a different future. Unless some compromise emerged, the byproduct that had long gone to local cattle farms would instead be directed to the 3 Rivers facility to produce natural gas.

Now, roughly 40 months later, that outcome has arrived.

What once may have felt temporary, negotiable, or reversible has hardened into policy. However farmers judge the fairness of that decision, the practical conclusion is now unavoidable: The slop that helped sustain Moore County cattle operations for decades is being redirected, and producers are being told to build a future without it.

Farmers have had time to see this coming. They have not had a way to make it hurt less.

A Different Use for the Stillage

Brown-Forman, Jack Daniel’s parent company, has framed that future in terms of efficiency, sustainability, and long-term operational sense.

The company is replacing the Cow Feeder Program with a $29.3 million anaerobic digester project at 852 Goodbranch Road, a joint venture between 3 Rivers Energy Partners and TC Energy operating as Lynchburg Renewable Fuels. Once operational, the facility is designed to convert distillery byproducts into renewable natural gas and digestate, a fertilizer product.

That process now begins in earnest.

The stillage will travel by dedicated underground pipeline from the Jack Daniel Distillery to the site, where it first lands in a 1.3-million-gallon reception tank before moving into three 2.4-million-gallon insulated digesters. Methane from the process is collected, cleaned, and sent into the Atmos Energy pipeline. The remaining solids are ultimately used as fertilizer.

Site officials have said the facility will process roughly 500,000 gallons of stillage a day. About 80 percent of the gas is expected to be produced in the primary tanks.

At the 2023 groundbreaking, 3 Rivers CEO John F. Rivers said the project would reduce the energy needed to produce Jack Daniel’s whiskey, create fertilizer for local farms, and generate millions in economic impact. Jack Daniel Distillery Senior Vice President and General Manager Melvin Keebler described it as a strategic step in the company’s sustainability journey.

Brown-Forman’s case makes sense on a balance sheet and in a sustainability report. The company has every reason to prefer a system that produces fuel, flatters its sustainability goals, and serves long-term industrial efficiency.

Still, a coherent strategy on paper hits hard on a farm road.

The Tools to Adapt – and Their Limits

For many Moore County producers, the argument is not philosophical. It is arithmetic.

Raising a cow can cost from $1,000 to $2,500 or more per head, with feed typically the single largest expense. Smaller farms, in particular, could see costs rise by hundreds of dollars per head each year without access to slop.

For many farmers, this is not a matter of inconvenience. It is a matter of viability.

Many contend they cannot sustain their current headcount without the stillage. That is not sentiment. It is math. In an economy where beef demand may hold steady while feed prices climb like kudzu, removing a cheap, dependable feed source does not merely tighten belts. It forces generational farms into decisions they may not be able to survive.

And those decisions do not happen in theory. They happen with notes at the bank, feed bills on the desk, and no room to miss.

The language from farmers has been sharp, but it tells you how they believe the relationship has changed. Some called the decision a “gut-punch.” Some warned that the real “economic impact” would be fewer farms and more subdivisions. Others argued that what had long functioned as a partnership with local farmers now looks, to them, like an internal cost-saving decision dressed in sustainability language.

There are state programs that may help farmers adapt. None of them restores the old math.

TAEP Can Help, but It's Not a Feed Source

The Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program (TAEP) was established in 2005 to provide cost-share dollars for long-term farm investments aimed at improving efficiency, adapting to market changes, and strengthening rural operations. Its menu covers a wide range of capital needs, from genetics and hay storage to livestock equipment, fencing, and diversification.

For some farms, that may keep the lights on a little longer.

But it is not an emergency feed source.

TAEP can help a farmer improve fencing, add hay storage, upgrade equipment, or modernize an operation. Extension planning can help a producer think more clearly about the road ahead. The provided material also points to rotational and higher-intensity grazing systems as possible ways to improve forage quality, soil health, and drought resilience over time, though these approaches require more fencing, water infrastructure, labor, and management.

They can help a farm change. They cannot help it pretend nothing changed.

Some producers have cut herd size. Some have invested in retooling. Some will apply for TAEP support and hope to manage the transition. Some may survive on slimmer margins and sharper discipline.

And some have already decided the numbers no longer work.

What Moore County Stands to Lose

When one operation shrinks, that is a private business decision. When many do, it becomes something larger: a land-use story, a tax-base story, and an identity story.

The fear farmers have voiced is straightforward. Once herds shrink and farms shut down, they do not simply snap back into place. Pastures are sold. Fence lines change hands. Fields that held cattle are starting to show up on plats and listings. The change first looks like paperwork. Before long, it looks like the county.

Brown-Forman is building toward one future. On too many farms, the work now is surviving the other one.

The Cow Feeder Program ends today. That much is settled. What is not settled is what Moore County will look like once the adjustment works its way through pastures, balance sheets, and land sales.

Some producers will cut herds, rework pastures, add storage, and fight their way through. Some may come out leaner and tougher.

Others will not make the turn.

But the concern farmers keep returning to is not hard to understand: Once a herd is cut, once a farm exits cattle, once a piece of ground leaves agriculture, the old arrangement is not easily rebuilt.

The renewable natural gas project is part of Jack Daniel’s future. What Moore County does not yet know is how many fewer cattle will be standing at the trough, how many fence lines will be put up for sale, and how much of its farm country will remain tomorrow.