For Immediate Release: March 23, 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 the reforms needed to reconnect the severed relationship between beef prices and cattle prices and to realign America’s trade policy with our nation’s food security needs. It is in three formats: written, audio and video. Anyone is welcome to use it for broadcasting or reporting.
Part IV: The State of America’s Beef Industry
Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA
In Parts I through III, we talked about how, in just over a generation, the U.S. cattle industry had succumbed to an oligopolistic market structure created by global beef packers with unlimited access to lower-cost and undifferentiated imports. This caused the U.S. cattle industry to contract in terms of the number of cattle producers, number of cattle and number of feedlots, which congregate cattle prior to slaughter. It also caused the distortion of competitive market forces that altered the competitive allocation of the consumers’ beef dollar along the supply chain, severed the historical relationship between cattle prices and beef prices and relegated the cattle industry to being incapable of withstanding even moderate economic shocks. We ended Part III by explaining that the second economic shock – the drought that struck in late 2020 – occurred as the cattle industry was already liquidating due to five years of depressed cattle prices, which occurred even though beef prices were rising. We then explained that the global beef packers were importing record volumes of beef from around the world to supplement the domestic cattle industry’s production shortfall. And though record imports had historically driven domestic cattle prices downward, the supply of domestic cattle was so incredibly tight that cattle prices broke free from their restraints and began chasing beef prices skyward.
The recent surge in cattle prices reduced the global beef packers’ long-term, record margins earned from the slaughter of domestic cattle, though their lost margins from cattle slaughter don’t reflect the additional revenues they earn from importing record volumes of cheaper imports.
We’ve never faced such extreme conditions in our industry before: record–high beef prices, record-high cattle prices, record-high imports and a record-low inventory of cows. These extreme conditions have again changed the allocation of the consumer beef dollar, with the live cattle industry now receiving a 53.5% share and the beef packers’ share shrinking considerably from its high in 2021.
On all accounts, the U.S. cattle industry should have begun expanding the U.S. cowherd beginning in 2023, when cattle prices first reached what was then a historical high. But it didn’t, and it still hasn’t today. The cattle crash of 2015 is still on the minds of America’s cattle farmers and ranchers, and with record volumes of imports and no changes to the structure of the U.S. cattle industry, they are wary of making the investment to expand, knowing the marketplace remains fundamentally broken.
We’re facing these extreme conditions today because, for decades, America shirked responsibility for ensuring that competitive market forces – not monopolistic power augmented with access to cheaper product substitutes – would determine the destiny of an industry that recently had over a million widely dispersed, hard-working and economy-contributing participants, as well as for the hundreds of millions of consumers who deserve and expect an abundant supply of affordable, safe and wholesome food – in this case, beef.
What must be done?
- We must reconnect the severed relationship between cattle prices and beef prices by countering the debilitating forces of monopolistic market power with competition.
- Enacting mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef will empower consumers to initiate demand signals for beef that is born, raised and slaughtered in the United States or for beef produced elsewhere. Consumers deserve that choice, and American cattle producers deserve the opportunity to realize a demand signal for U.S. cattle each time consumers choose an exclusively domestic beef product.
- Implementing rules to administer and enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act will rebalance the disparate market power between the highly concentrated beef packers and widely disaggregated cattle producers and result in increased price transparency within the beef supply chain.
- Rigorously enforcing antitrust laws will provide opportunities for the establishment of more, and more widely dispersed, packing and processing plants and more competition among them.
- We must realign trade policy with our food security interest of becoming self-reliant in beef production.
- Establishing worldwide tariff-rate quotas at levels that will not impede the domestic cattle cycle’s responsiveness to changes in America’s demand for domestic beef.
- Establishing tariffs on imported cattle and beef will offset the disparity in production costs caused by weak currencies, low wage rates and weaker production and safety standards.
These reforms will cost U.S. taxpayers nothing, but they will rebalance the competitive forces in the marketplace, ensuring that American farmers and ranchers can provide American consumers an affordable, safe and abundant supply of beef for generations to come.
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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.