For Immediate Release: March 13, 2026
Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard
Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com
Please find below R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary that explains how cattle and beef markets turned dysfunctional about 15 years ago, which thwarted the cattle industries opportunity to expand the size of the U.S. cowherd. It is in three formats: written, audio and video. Anyone is welcome to use it for broadcasting or reporting.
Part III: The State of America’s Beef Industry
Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA
In Part I, we talked about how the concentration in the marketplace exploded from 1980 to 2021, and how that explosion in concentration resulted in a complete reversal of the allocation of the consumers’ beef dollar to each participant in the beef supply chain. In Part II, we discussed how the government allowed the beef packers to form a tight oligopoly with access to imported beef and cattle from around the world, resulting in fewer opportunities for domestic producers that caused the domestic cattle industry to shrink. We ended with the statement that 15 years ago, the U.S. cow herd shrank to a level too low to allow the cattle industry to withstand even a moderate economic shock.
In late 2010, such a moderate economic shock struck – a widespread drought that occurred while the cattle herd was already in the liquidation phase of the cattle cycle that had started in 2008. The drought accelerated and accentuated America’s herd liquidation and by 2014 the U.S. cowherd was the smallest in about 70 years.
While the U.S. cowherd was shrinking, America’s appetite for beef was increasing, as was consumers’ willingness to pay higher prices for beef. During this period, beef supplies were tight, and both cattle prices and beef prices were increasing, with beef prices peaking at more than $6 per pound for the first time in history in 2015.
The rising beef and cattle prices signaled to the cattle industry that it should expand, and it was everyone’s expectation that cattle prices would remain strong for at least another three years due to the industry’s long biological cycle.
But while the cattle industry was beginning to hold back heifers and expand, the volume of beef and cattle imports exploded in 2014 and 2015, hitting a 13-year high in 2015.
The weight of this surge in undifferentiated imports contributed to the inexplicable collapse in cattle prices, which fell further and faster than any time in history, thwarting the domestic industry’s opportunity to rebuild the domestic cow herd in alignment with America’s growing beef appetite.
This resulted in an alarming aberration. The cow herd was expanding while cattle prices were swiftly falling.
And then the unexpected happened. While consumer beef prices initially fell in the face of collapsing cattle prices, they soon resumed their upward climb and continued to climb even while cattle prices were trending downward, creating the widest spread in history between cattle prices and beef prices, and this lasted for about five years.
Without a doubt, beginning around 2017 and continuing until very recently, consumers were paying inflated beef prices while cattle prices were suppressed. This was a classic example of severe market failure. Beef prices and cattle prices could not head in opposite directions for such an extended period of time if the market was competitive. The historical relationship between the price of cattle and the price of beef was severed.
Clearly, the tight oligopolistic marketplace was exploiting farmers and ranchers on one end of the supply chain and consumers on the other.
The 2022 agriculture census shows that during the period from 2017-2022, more than 106,000 beef cattle operations and more than 2.5 million mother cows were purged from the U.S. cattle industry.
Oligopolistic power amplified by rising imports created a dysfunctional market that thrust the cow herd back into a liquidation phase. And almost immediately after the cowherd began liquidating, another economic shock struck – a second widespread drought that again accelerated and accentuated the ongoing liquidation of the cow herd from late 2020 through 2022.
All the while the cow herd was liquidating, consumer beef demand was strengthening, and consumers continued demonstrating a willingness to pay more and more for beef. Import volumes exploded, hitting an all-time high in 2023, a new high in 2024, and yet another new high in 2025.
While import volumes were surging, consumer beef prices – which had been hitting year-over-year highs since 2017 – continued their year-over-year increases, reaching $9.55 for all-fresh beef and more than $10 per pound for Choice beef in December 2025.
Amazingly, despite mounting record volumes of imports, which have historically driven domestic cattle prices downward, the dangerously low cattle inventory in the face of historically strong beef demand eventually set cattle prices free from the forces that had been suppressing them, and cattle prices began chasing beef prices skyward.
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R-CALF USA’s weekly opinion/commentary educates and informs both consumers and producers about timely issues important to the U.S. cattle and sheep industries and rural America.
Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) is the largest producer-only trade association in the United States. It is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle and sheep industries. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or call 406-252-2516.