To Russia, with love: How one rancher has found success in the Russian beef business

By Codi Vallery-Mills

Darrell Stevenson of Hobson, Mont., isn’t sure where the last six years have gone. Like many folks who jump head first into a new venture, Stevenson has been focused on seeing that his new ranching enterprise is successful. But Stevenson’s new undertaking is ranching with a twist—six years ago, he took his ranching expertise to Russia, named it Stevenson Sputnik, and hasn’t looked back.Stevenson first plunged into raising cattle in Russia with international shipments of cattle – 1,435 in 2010 – and then more each consecutive year. “The floodgates opened in 2011 and there was a window of opportunity in Russia and Kazakhstan to take live cattle and semen there. There was a legitimate institutional push to build Russia’s beef industry to be self-sustaining. Goals were outlined to expand the country’s international food production,” Stevenson says. So Stevenson partnered with two St. Petersburg businessmen who knew the country, from politics to paperwork to the people, to build a ranching operation there. Voronezh, Russia, is where the first ranch, Stevenson Sputnik, was planted. Later, two more commercial cattle operations were established at other locations...more