Posted 4/22/2014 22:35 (#3831157 - in reply to #3830629) Subject: RE: A couple more reasons beef is so high priced
all over Iowa
No one made any money is a pretty strong statement. There are a lot of ranchers from Texas to the Dakotas that sold cows because they didn't have enough feed or enough water for them, not because they weren't making money in the cow/calf business. Looking at Cattle-Fax data (based on their own clients records) the average cow/calf operation has been profitable 17 out of the last 20 years. If it wasn't driven by profits, I don't think we'd see the current expansion we are seeing.
I think taking Zilmax out of the picture did have an impact. Reduce beef produced by 10# per head (and I'm more conservative than most estimates) on 80% of the fed cattle in the U.S. and you have 270 million pounds less beef in the national meat case.
LFTB was an even bigger deal - the estimate is that 70% of the ground beef contained LFTB at an average use rate of 15%. That would add up to almost a billion pounds a year taken off the market that needed to be replaced by imported lean trimmings.
A couple more reasons beef is so high priced
