A Growing Fear - Insight 14
A growing fear I have is one that has, honestly, only come about in the past year or so. It was once a mild worry, but now a deep-set fear.
Cattlemen across the United States have tried, hard, to share the greatest threat to beef and it is not hitting home with our people. We tried during COVID, we tried before that, we renewed efforts after, and now with high prices in 2025 we are trying again but it is not working.
If you asked me two years ago about my greatest worry, it was how to continue my family’s ranch once the responsibility transitions to my shoulders.
Now? I fear for our industry. I fear for one of our greatest food sources. I fear for our nation’s independent food production and security. I hold an overwhelming fear because no matter how much producers try to illustrate the problem, which is the four big companies price fixing at the top and unnecessary importation, the scapegoat is always the rancher or the farmer.
The villain is the producer and not the corporate middleman.
Now, with President Trump’s suggestion of MORE imported beef into the nation it is highlighting a greater issue.
We produce over 12 million metric tons of beef a year. We already produce 20% of the beef globally. We have been the top world producer of beef for years. We export nearly 1.3 million metric tons internationally.
Inversely, Brazil is now the second biggest world producer and has skyrocketed in production in the past few years because they have figured out a way to import beef to the United States and label is U.S. beef. You can send most of your thanks straight to JBS for that one.
As a nation, the United States imports beef every year from other nations, but one can argue you will never know the accurate number. Why? Because you can ship boxed beef into the nation, cut it into steaks and still call it a product of the United States all because the butchering process was ‘finished in the United States’. You may ask ‘Why’ again. Because Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) does not exist for beef. Consumers are constantly fooled at the store about what real U.S. beef is. You can only guarantee your meat is U.S. beef if you personally know your producer.
Despite the national cattle herd being at a low inventory level, the importation of more beef is not the solution. Understandably, the president is looking at basic supply and demand economics. If I was unfamiliar with the nuanced details of the situation, I would too.
However, it can easily be solved with two simple moves. Freeze beef exportation—keep it home—and break up the Big Four Meatpackers. Those two moves alone would solve many of the issues behind prices at the store.
President Trump campaigned on lowering grocery prices and putting the United States first. He can do that by focusing on providing our own food to our own people first then exporting any excess, not the other way around. He can do that by dissolving the price fixing that continues with JBS, Cargill, National, and Tyson. He can do that by listening to cattlemen and cattlewomen who know the issues and not the congressmen who keep getting influenced with green by Packer lobbyists.
This all comes full circle to my greatest fear. All this information is posted across social media, is constantly shared and re-shared, and stated and re-stated from various agricultural outlets. However, it never hits home.
We may all notice it now, but the public will forget in a few weeks or months. We struggle to break through by getting people to understand, to wrap their minds around the issue. We struggle to get consumers to grasp the depth and danger with the fragility of our food system. I fear, more than anything, that we will never figure it out and one day those who can solve the issue now will be long gone and never recover our losses.
One day I fear the American Cattleman will be a myth and whatever you have on your plate will be something raised in the worst of conditions, pumped full of hormones and any other additives consumers seek to avoid, then it will be too late. That will be the new norm, and the people of the United States will never have what they have now.
There are so many influencers, producers, and organizations out there illustrating the challenges in various ways. So many that explain and break down the issues so well. They keep using social media as an amazing tool to inform.
My greatest fear? Our efforts, their efforts, our industry’s efforts will never be truly heard. My growing fear is that my family’s loss, my neighbor’s loss, my community’s loss, my state’s loss one day will be the greatest loss for our nation. All because no one listened to the producers; no one stopped to understand what the two percent were saying all along.
