BLKCOW - 8/8/2025 06:44

Beef imports are up 33% and imports are down 8% year to year. Yet prices have gone up steadily and sometimes in leaps and bounds. THAT is how short cow numbers are. Not surprising when every acre accessible to anything but a mountain goat was plowed and planted to subsidized corn or soy beans. When any piece of crap meat can be imported and labeled the same as good American beef so the price of it (American beef) can be under cut. When your grazing lease hundreds of years old requires retaining a lawyer to protect your grazing rights. When urbanites vote to turn wolves loose to eat your cattle then make you prove that the scattered hair and bone fragments are grounds for very slow compensation. When owning land so you can spend a few days a year trying to shoot Bambi is worth more than producing food.

I suggest taking a picture of every cattle check received these days. If and when cattle prices have a steep down turn that will be the end of the American cattle industry as we know it. And maybe that's been the plan all along. There will be two kinds of ranchers. Those that got out and those that kick themselves every day for not getting out. If you think there was a lot of money lost during the 2014-2016 debacle, this would make that time look like loose change.