Beef prices have reached all-time highs in the U.S. and aren’t expected to come down any time soon.
The lack of rain in the Southwest combined with heavy snowfall and cold in the North has thinned the nation’s beef cattle herds to levels last seen in 1951, when there were about half as many mouths to feed in America.
The retail value of “all-fresh” USDA choice-grade beef jumped to a record $5.28 a pound in February, up from $4.91 the same time a year ago. The same grade of beef cost $3.97 as recently as 2008.
The swelling prices are roiling the beef supply chain from rancher to restaurant, and the situation only gets worse as many ranchers are selling their breeding stock to take advantage of high prices.
extreme drought continues day after day, ranchers are selling off large percentages of their cattle and calculating how long they can hold on before selling their entire herds.
The situation is so dire because the Central Coast is entering its second year of extreme drought. That means there is no grass from last year, and none is growing this year for the cattle to graze on.
Ranchers are paying premium prices for alfalfa feed with no end in sight. Brisket has more than tripled in price since 2008. Navel has more than doubled. Causing many restaurants and delis to have great difficulty finding quality meats at a reasonable price.
But the drought is not the only source of trouble in the cattle industry. The federal government is actively restricting access to federal lands that ranchers and cattlemen have been using for the last hundred years.
Federal authorities have closed off the portions of the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area in Nevada and are rounding up what they call “trespass cattle”. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has made the move to protect a desert turtle or some silly thing, but in the process have created a showdown with one outspoken rancher who argues that he has the preeminent right to the use of the land.
As dozens of protesters chanted slogans in designated “First Amendment areas,” armed federal officials oversaw the roundup of hundreds of cattle belonging to Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, who for decades has thumbed his nose at Washington, refusing to pay grazing fees to run 900 cattle on federal land.
