JUNE 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


27


Northern athlete dives into beef marketing Jonathan Dieleman pairs athletic training with long-distance meat runs


by EMILY BULMER


SMITHERS – Marketing grass-fed beef and training for the 2020 Paralympic Games might seem like an odd combination but it’s all in a day’s work for BC Paralympic swimmer Jonathan Dieleman. After breaking his back in a motorbike accident in 2010, Dieleman started swimming as a way to stay active.


"I got into the pool mainly as a way to get out of my wheelchair, for the freedom of the water, and some rehab,” says Dieleman. But he kept swimming and soon


found himself training for the triathlon, temporarily moving from Smithers to the Lower Mainland. “The coach that I met down there


asked me if I wanted to swim in the Parapan Am games. I made the team and kept going from there." Now living back in the north, Dieleman’s eyes are set on the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. He spends a lot of time driving between Smithers and Richmond for training. But what started as a long commute with an empty truck has turned into a direct marketing and business opportunity for the beef producers he is still connected with through family and friends. “My brother came up with the idea,” he says. “Whenever his friends came


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Paralympic swimmer and agri-peneur Jonathan Dieleman. FILE PHOTO


over for dinner, they were always wondering where they got their meat from because it was so good.” His brother suggested that Dieleman build a customer base and start taking meat south on a regular basis. Dieleman created Bulkley Meats, swapped his vehicle for a refrigerated truck and started making connections with potential customers at the Richmond pool where he trains. It is a


new enterprise, but one he hopes to expand in the coming years. “I would like to get to the point


where I make a delivery once a month. My idea is that by the time I'm ready to retire (from swimming), I can use the Bulkley Meats business to support myself,” he says. It is a mutually beneficial enterprise, as it expands the customer base for participating producers as well as


giving Dieleman a livelihood. One of the challenges northern


producers face is access to markets. While an increasing number of people want to buy locally raised meat, only so many live in the small towns of northern BC. A producer’s immediate circle can only eat so much meat. Access to larger populations would be nice, if it was easy, but the cost of transportation and distribution make tapping into larger markets costly and impractical in terms of the bottom line. “There are a lot of families that are into getting good-quality meat and knowing where it comes from, and having it delivered makes it easy for them,” says Dieleman, who prefers delivering a quarter of an animal at a time.


A local abattoir and butcher shops


prepare the meat he sells, which not only helps build the local economy but ensures everything he distributes is inspected and prepared for legal sale.


The business is also a great way for Dieleman to stay connected with the farms he loves while pursuing his dream of a gold medal in Tokyo. With a fifth-place ranking at the Rio


Paralympic games last summer, he is well on his way. With his ‘down-on- the-farm’ work ethic, he’s determined to tackle both his business and athletic goals with an eye to winning.


The measure of success.


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