North central TX | flanman - 6/3/2020 21:02
Thanks for some of the replies. I appreciate it. This was at a small mom and pop grocery store. I know they've had trouble getting certain types of meat too. Pork was $4.89 a pound. I bought 12 pork chops and was $30.22. Price went up a buck in last week. So how many middlemen are there between the farmer and the store shelf in the beef business? Thanks for all the great information. God bless all of you.
Generally between the COW-CALF guy and the customer there is the:
BACKGROUNDER(guy who buys the lightweight calves at the salebarn and adds several hundred pounds of growth via winter wheat, grass, or feed), the
FEEDER/FINISHER(may buy light cattle from the cow-calf guy or heavier cattle from the backgrounder)
[They each only make a couple hundred dollars at best(its pennies on the dollar or loss right now), with the least profit going to the cow-calf guy generally]
Then you come to the packer, this is where >90%of the profit is currently concentrated as referenced in the links I posted above. This is possible because 4 companies now own ~80% of the kill capacity in the US (a failure of the us justice and antitrust laws imo)
Finally you have the distributors and the retail guys who are also at the mercy of the packers cause they can set the price where they want |
Beef Price question for the cattle guys?
