Walking through my local food market on a recent day, one may observe customers hurrying along pushing oversized shopping carts, which they fill with nutritious and generally fair-priced fruits, vegetables, dairy, eggs, poultry, bakery goods and canned products. But at the meat aisle traffic thins and slows. Here customers practice “seulement regarde!”as they cautiously peruse neatly packed cellophane-wrapped red meats. They are clearly interested, but hesitate to stop, for to do so, and then move on without reaching in to chose a package would clearly imply that they could not afford to purchase the product on display. That is perhaps too troubling an admission.
But there is good reason for their behavior. In this average local food market 80%/20% ground beef sported a price tag of $8 and $9 dollars per package, while beef stew-meat, in neat plastic containers were marked at $11 and $12 dollars each. Even beef soup-bones with no red meat attached were priced about $8 a pound. A single small, strip-steak retailed at $14 dollars, and an attractive “T” bone steak at $37 dollars. Passing customers could only look but not buy beef at these prices.
HIGH BEEF PRICES: THE SPEAR POINT OF THE “AFFORDABILITY CRISIS”
The Democrat’s attacks on the President’s domestic policies have crystallized around the nucleus of the nation’s consistent high prices for goods and services. They have and molded into an effective weapon to attack the President which they call the “Affordability Crisis”. The sharp point of that political thrust is the actual very high cost of beef which has remained at abnormal high levels.
Well aware the Democrat attacks have affected his popularity polls, the President, perhaps precipitously and unfairly, called on the beef industry to “lower prices” claiming that “beef was too expensive and that ranchers must lower them. He predicted that “prices would be coming down soon”. A statement which had heavy consequences on some of his ardent supporters,
Cattle ranchers and others in the beef industry were “unsaddled” by the President’s comments. Trump was “their guy” who they had just recently supported so unreservedly. But, overnight he quadrupled the amount of cheap Argentinian beef that could be imported, cut duties on imported Brazilian beef, and then launched an investigation into meat packing industry for “price manipulation”. These actions had some bad impact on the industry but nothing happened to lower prices for consumers. (To add to the problem of high pricing, the Trump administration was recently forced to cut beef imports[ from Mexico due to a serious outbreak of a cattle virus. Less beef in the market place only helped to keep prices high.)
The result of the President’s responses, particularly his claim that “prices would come down soon”, was almost immediate. Feeder cattle “futures” on the Market dropped by 21% in December 2025 after hitting a high point on October 16, 2025–the very day Trump said he was going to lower prices.
But prices at the food market did not budge. What did change was the price that ranchers could get for “feeder cattle”. A feed lot operator recounted how he bought 500 head of cattle at $5 dollars a pound live weight. On average each weighed in at about 500 lbs, Thus he had just paid about $2,500 per head for 500 steers ($1,250,000), but after Trump’s comments on prices “having to come down”, this investor watched the futures for those cattle drop to $2,200 per head almost overnight. So before he even transported his cattle to the feeder lot, he had already lost $150,000. Ranchers, herders, feed lot operators lost out, but consumers were still paying high prices for beef. (See “Cattle ranchers are hit by a push by President Trump to lower beef prices”: Reuters 12/24/25, “Not Happy Trump Supporter”)
The origin of the beef prices we all read with trepidation on the plastic packages in our meat aisles is more complex than we realize. Unlike poultry, hogs or eggs, beef production is a long term investment. The time from the birth of a calf on a Nebraska cattle ranch to a finished beef carcass may take between one to two years (1-2 years) of decision making, investment, hard outdoor labor by ranchers and feed lot operators to get a beef carcass that can be sold to a retail food market. That time frame is twice that much—4 years of care, feeding and adequate pasturage for the higher in demand organic or grass-fed cattle.
In 1960 there were about 26 million head of cattle on USA cattle ranches, by 1970 that number rose to a maximum of about 45 million, and from that period on the numbers have declined year after year to the present time (2022 data) to 28 million or about 1960 levels. Why the decline?
GOOD GRAZING LAND IS ESSENTIAL
You can’t raise beef cattle in your back yard. Cattle require large tracts of arable land to flourish. In the well-watered Northeast or Florida a cow and her calf (a cow-pair) may require a minimum of 1-2 acres of good pasture to flourish. Under more typical beef raising conditions in the western big beef states where variable rainfall, droughts, and less verdant pastures and ranges a cow-pair generally require 7 to 15 acres per pair. So cattle ranching in the big beef cattle states is an occupation and enterprise which require a lot of open spaces.
In the big three “beef states” of Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, (origin of about 1/3 of our beef) beef cows are raised on the vast open ranges where cattle ranches may occupy tens of thousands of semi dry or arid acres. In the spring, on these ranches, cows give birth to their calves. The calf stays with its mother until it is weaned. By 6-8 months of age, when it reaches about 500-600 lbs it may be sold and sent off as a “feeder calf” to a “feed lot” operation where it may remain for six months to a year. When it reaches a market weight of 1000 lbs to 1500 lbs it is ready for sale as a steer and is sold for slaughter.
It’s biology! Cattle are grazers..they eat grass..To grow adequate grass rangelands require adequate soil moisture. Some of that is derived from winter snows—as spring snow melt— and after that more is required in June when the dry season begins in the west. This June rain must come from adequate rainfall during the spring and summer months.
The key period for cattle raising is in the month of June during at which time the cattle must have acceptable grazing to survive and grow profitably. The quality of the grazing and amount is the key to a successful profitable outcome for ranchers. In recent decades June rains (as well as winter snows cover) have been scarce or highly variable. Such long term weather phenomena are classed as droughts.
BEEF PRODUCING STATES ARE NATURALLY DRY AND ALSO DROUGHT PRONE
Our far western states are almost all challenged by droughts. The ten big “beef states” in our west almost all occur in a geographic area that is naturally arid with much of it classified as “hot summer, continental climate”. Read that as hot dry arid summers, cold harsh winters.
The reason for their aridity is geography. In the latitude of the USA prevailing winds come from the west and southwest. These winds carry moisture-laden Pacific Ocean air, and as they rise over the California, Oregon and Washington coast mountain ranges and then the Sierra Nevada and Olympics the rising moist air cools and forms clouds which drop abundant rain and snow on the west slopes of these mountain ranges. The resulting drier air flows over these highlands and descends over the eastern slopes, warming up (adiabatic heating) and decreasing in humidity as it descends into the western deserts in Utah, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico (These deserts are the result of this weather process).
This same Pacific air, now warmer and lower in humidity, continues east into eastern Colorado and eastern New Mexico where it is forced to rise again as it climbs the western slopes of the Rockies, losing more moisture as it does so.
These air masses are then exceptionally dry as they descends on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, into the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri warming as air pressure increases and its humidity decreases even further to near desert like levels. As a result, the weather (and climates) in most of our states west of the 100th meridian (longitude) are exceptionally dry, as a result of (mountain) of orographic lifting and dehydration. This is a result of geography alone.
These western states, west of the 100 degree west-longitude line have climates characterized by variable and limited rainfall. In many areas in the west are classed as “desert”.
The western big10 beef producing states typically have a rainfall from 10-to 20 inches of rain/snow equivalent. Whereas the northeast and southeast USA have on average about 30–40 inches of more rain annually. Some areas are borderline desert. (Deserts are defined as having less than 10 inches of rain, high rates of evaporation, few permanent streams sparse discontinuous vegetative cover.)
Today these arid western states are characterized with burgeoning human populations, expanding urban and suburban areas, and increasing use of ground water for agriculture, irrigation and industry. In 1900 there were nine (9)million people living west of the 100th meridian, in 1960 that number jumped to 30 million and by 2000 to sixty to seventy (60-70) million at the present time (2025) 116 million people call that region home. That increase in population is dramatic, but one must remember that this surge in population came in an area with a static level of water resources. More people, more farmers, more irrigation, more pumping of groundwater and lowering of stream and groundwater pond levels and all with the same amounts of rain and snow pack to replenish the shortfall. The west is running out of water by using water in an unsustainable way.
This overuse of rainwater and groundwater resources affects ranchers and the beef industry too. Over use lowers ground water levels, dries up streams that once were water sources for grazing herds, and dries up ponds and lakes used for the same purpose.
Periods of drought do occur naturally and in cycles. During the La Niña/El Nino sea water temperature at the equator swing back and forth from high to low due to the strength of easterly winds. These cycles alter the rain patterns in the western USA. During the La Niña phase of this oscillating phenomenon, cold Pacific surface water pools up at the equator off the coast of Ecuador and shifts the mid latitude jet stream northward toward Canada causing more persistent dry periods over the southwest and western USA often resulting in a series of drought years.
MEGADROUGHTS
However, western USA has along history of more persistent droughts which may last decades. climatologists refer to these as “megadroughts”.Long before the commencement of the Industrial Age, megadroughts or decades long dry spells were documented by archeologists. We now know, based on dendrochronology studies (i.e. analysis of tree rings data) that megadroughts occurred in western USA as far back as 800AD. Megadroughts are also associated with the abandonment of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon by Anasazi in the 12th and 13th centuries AD. The Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a megadrought. The most recent megadrought beginning in 2000 and lasting to the present (2025) is claimed to be the driest in the last 1200 years. Megadroughts of the past may have been intensified and prolonged by the La Niña equatorial oscillation.
Though the La Niña phenomena and the occurrence of cyclical megadroughts are apparently independent of human activities, there is no question that human use of fossil fuels, particularly the use of fossil fuels which increase levels of atmospheric CO2 —a heat absorbing gas—in the atmosphere have probably increased the intensity and perhaps the duration of the present megadrought.
Droughts force cattle producers to provide water to their stock in outlying fields by expensive trucking water to herds, or by installing irrigation to crop fields and to pastures where cows are grazing. During droughts calves have to be weaned earlier than usual and this puts them at greater risk of dying. Costs to ranchers increase when grazing is inadequate and there is a need to provide supplemental (usually expensive grain) feeds to cows experiencing food and water stress.
The result of continued droughts is that ranchers must cut down on their herd size or the number of “mouths to feed” during a prolonged drought season— resulting in smaller herds, fewer cattle sent to market, scarce product available and high beef prices.
From 2015 to 2023 the amount of June pasture land in Nebraska suffering from droughty conditions and unusable pasture acreage has increased over those years from 6% to 34%. At present (2023 data) usable Nebraska pasture land is at about one-third of wa hat is was in 2015. And as a partial result of that the US herd now at a 63 year low. Size of US herd has decreased sine 1975 Texas Missouri and Nebraska which together produce almost a 1/3 of all US beef have all experienced drought and have reported the largest decline in the quality of June pasture since 2020. Today the USA cattle herd is the smallest it has ever been. A declining herd means a rise in consumer prices for beef,
Because prices are so high now, market analysts would normally advise ranchers to to increase herds to take advantage of high prices—-but long term drought conditions have become the new “normal” in the minds of investors and ranchers and this is what makes them resist that urge to expand production.
Thus beef prices are high because our beef herd is at the lowest level in almost sixty five years. Right now our beef herd is about what it was in1960, about 27 or 28 million head. In1960 the US population was about 180 million, so at a time when our population has almost doubled to 350 million we presently have about half the beef cattle herd we would need to slake demand for beef.
Why high breed prices? No price manipulation, no massive profits to ranchers. It’s a tough business with high risks for investors and ranchers too. Assuming an increased demand commensurate with the population, US supply of beef has remained at about the same level as 65 years ago. That is: supply is low and demand is high. A typical situation for high prices. Supply is low due to long term drought and uncertainty concerning when and how the megadrought will abate.
Expect prices to remain high!
(See “Drought and the size of the USA cattle herd”: McCracken, John 3/13/24 Investigate Midwest.Org, Droughts, Result In US Beef Herd At Historic Low. And “The great western drought” Gleick, Peter, et.al 8/2/2021 Sierra Club)
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