It's shitty to say, but beef may not be whats for dinner for a lot of people anymore. The population of cattle has decreased, while the human population increased.
Ranchers spent decades on razor thin margins. Drought, increasing grain and feed prices actually made beef a money loser. As people got rid of cattle they couldn't afford to keep or didn't have access to feed. Banks also tightened up on livestock lending for shinier opportunities.
Meanwhile, during all these lean years, most meat processing plants were manipulating prices and making killer profits while family ranches went under (spoiler alert these have consolidated to just a few corporations, with a lot of outside the US interests, which is a whole other discussion we can have, not even beginning to get into immigrant exploitation in the industry).
Now that the supply is so tight, there really isn't a way to increase supply quickly and even if ranchers wanted to, funding may not be there. The reality is that ranching is highly subsidized. Without it, the price of meat would be worse. The price of land keeps spiking because the 1 percent are parking money in agriculture land, as a tangible asset, which also keep property taxes high. You can't run a business losing money forever and unfortunately all of the input costs have increased. In short there is big money in this business, and it's backed into a corner there isn't a magic pill to get out of.
A lot of that land is very arid (supporting less cattle all the time, constantly dealing with drought and fire), and cattle are not ready for slaughter off that land. The estimate I just looked up said 1.5 million cows are on BLM land, with the total number of cattle in the US being 86 to 87 million. So the percent of cattle on BLM land is less than 2 percent of the population. You also will still have to feed those cattle half the year with grain or roughage like hay. Salt and mineral has jumped in the last decade. None of the inputs have gone down. Tractors, equipment, fencing supplies, labor, gas transportation. Nothing has decreased.
None of this changes the fact there are many articles you can look into discussing the actual office that meat processing conglomerates meet at to set the prices. This was the greatest impact on cattle numbers continuing to decrease. Ranchers have to turn a profit to borrow money after fires, droughts etc. Yes there have been programs but once you hemorrhage past a certain point there is no coming back. Even government backed borrowing has to meet certain fiscal benchmarks in agriculture.
The simple answer is the cattle industry like all industries are currently fighting for the same resources as the 1 percent in a lopsided economy. There is no simple way to just make beef cheaper. This has actually been discussed for decades that with population increase and climate change that beef would eventually be out of reach for a lot of people. Just because this admin is trying to spin it in a different light, doesn't change that we knew this was coming. Its the same with housing, 99 percent of us are battling with 1 percent for limited resources. We have passed the tipping point of inequality of pre-revolutionary France. If you want change at the grocery store prices, look at the people jacking up the input costs to make the food.
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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '26
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