Why America's Cattle Ranchers Keep Getting Squeezed
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Joe, what do you eat more of? Eggs or beef?
You know what I was just thinking, I want to eat more beef in my my life. I probably do eat more eggs ultimately. But like beef is just so good. Beef is the best food there is in the entire world. I truly believe that. And every time I eat beef, I think about why don't I eat this all the time? It's so good. It's so satisfying and all these nutrients. I don't have this impulse to snack and eat garbage afterwards. I want to eat more beef.
I'm pretty sure I eat more beef than eggs at this point. Like I will have the occasional omelet and I mix a lot of eggs into like Asian noodle dishes and things like that. But not that. I inspire
to live the Tracy Alloway to have the Tracy Alloway diet.
Okay. Well, speaking of beef. Except it's real expensive these days. Yes, this is exactly it. So I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast at this point has heard about rising beef prices in the US. There are a lot of headlines flying around constantly in recent days about this. So for instance, we're recording this on October thirtieth and earlier this week President Trump was tweeting about how he wants beef prices to be lower. He's also been talking about buying beef from Argentina.
Yeah.
It is very much in the news. There's also the whole soybean drama with China.
Yeah, there is a I think it's funny because in that Trump post he said uh cattle ranchers should appreciate how good things are going because high beef prices, but bring them down. There is just a lot. And I've said this before on the show, which is that I think the ultimate marker of civilization is the amount of beef or protein that you can buy with an hour's work, that the median person or the average person can buy with an hour's work. And I think when it's going backwards, we should be very disturbed. So setting aside, I'm very fortunate I can probably afford to eat as much beef as I want, but the price of ground beef, I'm looking it up on the uh terminal now, it's like tripled since twenty ten.
Yeah. It was like four dollars around the pandemic, now it's over six dollars. I think these are extremely serious issues.
I will say I don't think we need to be quite as obsessed with protein. Americans especially, we already eat a lot of protein. Okay. Eat more fiber.
I'm not saying we need to be obsessed. Actually I do think that protein craze may be a little out of hand. I just think this is like a very good measure of the advance of sort of a wealthy society that protein gets more affordable.
I'm gonna get you a cow share for Christmas.
Thank you.
All right. Well, I am happy to say we do, in fact, have the perfect guest. We're gonna be speaking with Bill Bullard. He is the CEO of RCAF USA. So, Bill, thank you so much for coming on OutLots.
Glad to be here. Thank you.
Thank you also for actually looking the part of a cattle rancher. We really appreciate that.
No one can deny that we're talking to the perfect guest.
All right. So why don't we start really simple? What have you observed about beef prices just in the past few months or so?
Well, we've seen beef prices increasing as you've indicated, and we see cattle pricing also increasing as you indicated. So we now have a positive relationship between the price of beef and the price of cattle, and we are a competitive industry. We do not rely on government price supports for the single largest segment of American agriculture.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–15:52
2
Why have beef prices surged and what does it mean for consumers?
15:52–22:37
3
How did the relationship between cattle prices and beef prices change after 2015?
22:37–29:44
4
What historical factors caused the shift from a producer‑favored market to a packer‑favored market?
29:44–37:34
5
How has industry consolidation reduced the number of U.S. cattle producers?
37:34–43:12
6
What role do imports and lack of country‑of‑origin labeling play in the beef market squeeze?
43:12–45:20
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from Odd Lots
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