R-CALF USA CEO Invoice Bullard weighs in on President Donald Trump’s new farm-aid announcement, what it means for the business, and the widening unfold between beef and cattle costs on ‘Making Cash.’
Whereas beef costs are projected to fall, one business economist argued that it may be some time earlier than customers see any reduction.
“It’s going to be a slow and painful process for the consumer,” Wells Fargo Agri-Meals Institute chief agricultural economist Michael Swanson instructed FOX Enterprise when explaining the advanced market forces that want to vary to ensure that costs to say no.
The price of beef has been a specific ache level for customers for years, with retail beef costs hitting file highs in 2024 due to a mixture of deteriorating pasture situations, inflation and contracting cattle stock, in accordance with the Farm Bureau.
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Beef costs rose sharply in September, outpacing your entire meals class on the Division of Labor’s client value index. The worth of meals rose by 3.1% yr over yr, whereas costs for beef and veal shot up 14.7%.
A ranch hand rounds up cattle in St. Lucie County, Florida. (Ty Wright/Bloomberg/Getty Photos)
Issues persist within the business, in accordance with Farm Bureau economist Bernt Nelson, who wrote in a weblog put up final week that the Division of Agriculture’s “Cattle on Feed” report highlights ongoing tightness in feeder cattle provides.
There have been 11.7 million cattle on feed within the U.S. on Nov. 1, down about 2% from 2024 and the bottom variety of cattle on feed for the month of November since 2018. The report additionally estimates that 2.04 million head of cattle have been positioned into feedlots, down about 10% from final yr and marking the bottom variety of cattle positioned on feed for the month of October in report historical past.
The smaller variety of cattle positioned on feed, which is the meat offered in retailer, is a mirrored image of tighter provides of feeder cattle.
Beef cattle in corrals at a ranch in Sonoita, Arizona, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photos)
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There are additionally a number of gamers within the beef provide chain – cattle producers, the meat packers and wholesalers and the retailers – who wish to defend their margins. Since nobody in that provide chain desires to simply accept decrease income, it turns into more durable to decrease prices for customers, Swanson instructed FOX Enterprise.
That competitors will finally push beef costs decrease.
The “players in this operation don’t want to give up what they have currently. And so it’s going to be a competition that forces the prices down,” he stated, including that “It’s never a straight line.”
Indicators of that shift are already rising. Swanson stated the business is probably going at a turning level following Tyson’s announcement final month that it could completely shut a big beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, by January 2026 and that it was decreasing operations at its beef facility in Texas to a single shift.
Packages of meat are seen at a grocery grocery store in Houston, Texas. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Instantly after its announcement, stay cattle costs fell sharply. Although costs bounced again a bit, they’re nonetheless under the current highs, in accordance with Swanson.
That transfer “immediately sent a big signal to the market that they’re going to bid a little less aggressively on live cattle,” in accordance with Swanson.
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He stated meat processors could not proceed to lose cash and “Tyson just proved that they’re willing to do something difficult about it.”
He believes cattle costs will begin to come down, and that seeing a ten% decline, like there was in 2014, is not “out of the realm” for what might occur over the following yr and a half.
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“If the price of cattle goes down and the wholesale price of beef goes down, yes, the retail price of beef will go down,” he stated. “But when is it going to happen? Not immediately. So the consumer’s going to be frustrated and they’re not seeing immediate relief.”
