Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #269: Why Beef Prices Keep Rising, America's Shrinking Herd, and the Cost of Overgrazing

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Episode #269: Why Beef Prices Keep Rising, America's Shrinking Herd, and the Cost of Overgrazing · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the cure to high prices is high price.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, when the price goes high enough, it becomes attractive.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: People get in, and then the price comes down.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the management, then the human management, yes, you're then the human management is far worse than nature taking its course.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm getting at is I don't want to get into an argument about humans always mess everything up.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We do a lot of times, but we don't have to.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We can also do a lot of good, a lot of healing.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough, and I'm here with, of course, our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin, and he is going to go deep into the space of beef today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: But first, we have an exciting announcement.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: We are advancing in the technological space on this podcast.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: No thanks to Joel or myself, but thanks to Nolan, our amazing editor and producer.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: He has set up the ability for us to receive voice messages and text messages from all of you.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you can find that in the description in the podcast.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you please feel free to leave us feedback, ask questions, you know, leave comments.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we just may um air some of those on our show and and discuss your comments and questions.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so exciting news.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have even more exciting news coming from Joel as he unravels what's happening, continuing to happen in this beef space.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Joel, take it away.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm all ears, I'm ready to learn.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So unless you've been living in a in a uh cave somewhere, you're well aware that beef has occupied a tremendous amount of media space.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in fact, Trump's uh President Trump's recent um release of three, well, subsidy of 300,000 metric tons of beef, of uh, well, actually, it's um lean trimmed product, uh, mainly from Argentina, to supplement America's uh beef and bring down prices, has of course uh received a lot of publicity, including the fact that it has um uh uh raised the ire of ranchers and cattle farmers around the country uh just when they when they were starting to get uh profitable, then you know, boom, we suddenly we have all these um subsidized imports.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to realize that these that these uh untariffed imports are one of the one of the portions of the deal was that they would come in at 25% under market price.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I haven't been able to find out, Cena, whether that is an that is a an American subsidy to Argentina to bring them in at that price, or whether this was this is just a salvage, uh, you know, uh cleaning the floors of slaughterhouses in Argentina.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not that bad, but anyway, uh close to it, uh, of a salvage product that they couldn't move and they're willing to drop the price this much just to move it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know which is the case, but in any case, in any case, it is it is a guaranteed 25% undermarket uh price for this um imported beef.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why 300,000 metric tons?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, interestingly, Americans eat or utilize about 100,000 metric tons of this kind of beef every month.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So 300,000 is for 90 days, and that executive order was made almost to the day 90 days from the midterm elections.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um the that that uh calendar um uh calendar complementarity is too obvious to I think require elaboration.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is a very much a political move.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: What I was so so what's happened, so what's happened since?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what's happened since is, and and just in full transparency, our farm C you know, we buy um we buy somewhere between 200, 250 calves a year.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So for those of you who aren't in the beef business, uh let's just let's just break down what a beef cattle operation is.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are essentially three phases.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't a chicken where everything happens within you know eight weeks, okay?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even a pig where everything happens within a year, all right.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: In beef, the cycle is quite long.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you have you have a cow who uh has a calf, and her gestation is under a year.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So she gets bread in the summer, calves in the spring, and then in the fall, those calves are generally sold to somebody who runs a stalker operation.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're called stalkers, you know, they're sold at 400, 500, 550 pounds as you know, as eight-month-olds or so, and then they go to a you know, a stalker operation that then raises them up to where they're ready to go to a feedlot.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so the three phases are the cow calf, the stalker, and the feedlot finishing uh component.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there's three specific components in the average cattle operation.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some up some farms, like us, for example, we have cow calf, stalker, and finisher.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we we have all three of them here, but we don't we don't birth enough calves to meet our market, so we do buy you know somewhere around 200 calves a year to supplement our own, you know, birthed 150 uh to um you know to have beef uh that we you know raise up and grass finish and sell.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So again, the the number that's been you know quite bandied about here is that the U.S.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: cow herd, the U.S.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: beef number of head herd is lower than it's been in 70 years, roughly since 1950.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about what's happened to the U.S.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: population since 1950.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it hasn't doubled, but it has almost doubled.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this this um uh uh uh from 200 million to 330 million people.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge increase, you know.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a 40% increase in population, and the beef herd has actually decreased.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So why everybody wants to know what is it that has decreased this has made the cow numbers drop so precipitously.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that nobody I haven't heard anybody anywhere, um mainstream media, alternative media, anybody, I haven't heard a single person say anything about the quality of America's pastures.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what has and and I think this is the number one culprit.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: We as a as a nation, we have overgrazed our pastures, and and this is just this is not just an American situation.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: This has happened historically.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, this is why we developed the law of the commons or the tragedy of the commons.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: The tragedy of the commons, that phrase that everybody's heard, tragedy of the commons, where'd that originate?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that originated by the fact that uh that nomads would overgraze the commons because what nobody owned, well, there's a blade of grass there, so my goat might as well get it instead of somebody else's goat.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have the tragedy of the commons.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, in the early days of the um of the big wildlife preserves in Africa, uh, like Kenya, Nigeria, these big wildlife um preserves, they did lots of studies about the pounds of meat produced in the wildlife preserve versus what the you know the um domestic livestock produced per acre, you know, right outside the fence.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in every one of these, the domestic production was half what the wildlife preserve was doing with with this this you know, migration, rotation, predator prey, the movement, and all that stuff.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and so so this is not something that is uniquely American, but what we what we have is a is a burgeoning population base on a um uh on a debilitating, I guess that would be the right word, a debilitating land base.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, let me just make sure I understand because uh that seems like there's a huge implication behind what you were just saying with like the nature preserve.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, so in this wild space, if you do nothing, you just let nature be.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying that it is going to produce twice as much food as if we are trying to control the food production, like our domesticated food production.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're saying?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh no, that's not what I'm saying.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is if you let nature do its thing, it will be more productive than greedy people taking a short-term view and extracting everything they can today.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's different than saying private entities managing the landscape.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: If if you if you compare well-managed landscape, the kind of things that Alan Savory has done with holistic management in Zimbabwe, for example, or the kind of things that we've done here on our farm, if you take if you take a human intervention that is that is uh um that is practicing biomimicry with the injection of human management at that, shall we say, creative humble scale, um, then you actually get more production than nature offers.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: But if you if you have human management that is completely short-sighted, uh um greedy and and exploitive or exploitative, I think the right word is exploitative.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um you would know.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my old English major.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exploitative.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if if um if that's the management, then the human management, yes, you're then the human management is far worse than nature taking its course.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So so if if you have th think about this way, you know, uh you always ask such good questions.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I I've never I've never just presented this way, but it if you if you have nature, let's say we have we have three um you know three spots here, three charts.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: In the middle is nature doing its thing.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: On we'll say the left is mismanagement by humans.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: On the right is good management by humans.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: So nature doing its thing is in the middle.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mismanagement by humans on the left is is uh is degradational, and good management on the right is actually um multiplicative.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is that clear?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So so so it's not what I'm getting at is I don't want to get into an argument about well, humans always mess everything up.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we do a lot of times, but we don't have to.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can also do a lot of good, a lot of healing.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want this to be a nature versus human thing.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I want this to be uh good management versus bad management thing.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because on that side of, I think you put it on the right side where you're having a good management practices, you're producing more, but you're also giving back, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're giving back to the soil, you're regenerating soil, for example.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're uh aren't you like building diversity?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So so but that would be like if you're taking land that's already been stripped down, like you guys did at Polyface Farm, then you're rebuilding it as you're growing food.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if it started with nature and it already had diversity in it, and let's say so, let's say there's a lot of um you know, diversity in the soil and in the plants, and there wasn't any spray.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Could you, Joel, take that land, that wild untouched land, and reproduce polyphase on it and still make more food than that was giving and regenerate it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and give back to it at the same time?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's great.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, that's exactly right.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and the problem was that when we came to our farm, um it was it it had been under bad management for a very, very long time.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so we had a you know, we we started the race with two broken legs, a broken rib, and a uh, you know, a uh whatever, a cracked head.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, there was a lot, a lot of healing uh required and and still is.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're still you know, we're still working at it pretty uh dramatically.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: But um I I like that that nuance that you've teased out here is it's not it's not man versus nature, it's it's nature, and then basically man versus man, you know, uh on on the two the two spectrums.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've got here is um is extremely over-grazed pasture.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you so what's the secret to not over-grazing?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: The secret to not over-grazing is rest.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the rest.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: That that's the rest cycle.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who aren't, you know, cattle people, I want you to think about when you drive down a road and you see a herd of cattle out there on a in a field, chances are those cows are in that field for the whole year, or at least the whole season, and you see them move around from this corner to that corner, you know, and then you see them day to day.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: But but but they but they have access to the whole acreage all the time, all season, and the pastures are eaten down to where you you'd almost uh uh clip them off with a pair of uh fingernail clippers, you know, uh it's that short.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so and and what happens is the grass develops underground to mimic what is above the ground.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what you can see above the ground is what you see under the ground.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if you see, if you see extremely short grass above the ground, guess how long the roots are?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Short.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Short, right.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So then here comes here comes a drought, here comes anything that's any weather anomaly, whether it's drought or or a lot of rain.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and in either case, uh the the lack of vegetation and lack of root structure makes the ground hard, makes the makes the if if it's rain, makes the raindrops hit the ground hard, you know, without without shattering on on leaves and and and uh vegetation.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so you get you get um you get no in soak, you get a lot of runoff.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the secret to hydration on any landscape is three things.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's three S's.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Stop it, spread it, and soak it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Stop it, spread it, soak it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Water that's running fast across the landscape does not soak in.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't spread.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: It goes to a ditch, to a creek, to a stream, and out it goes.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so, and so the the the the secret here is stop it, spread it, and soak it, and that starts with a very thick, heavy vegetative cover to make the raindrops hit the soil as a mist rather than a raindrop.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: It hits that hits that uh vegetation at 60 miles an hour and splatters.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you could actually you know get a can, and this has been done, get a camera and go under that that you know grass canopy, it would just look like a heavy fog coming onto the soil surface, and that allows it to in soak.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I'm trying to describe here, Cena, is that now for for decades, um, for decades, cattle farmers under continuous grazing, without rest periods on their pastures, have been um have been abusing, I guess that's the best, abusing the ecology.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: The grass, the soil, the root structure, everything about the eco, the biological ecosystem has been abused for for a very, very long time.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so when you when you start at, let's say, you know, um right after right after the bison, and you start at 100%, we have been dropping percentage points every year, or at least a portion of percentage points.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: If we drop a percentage point every year in 100 years, it wouldn't be any grass.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But but we've been dropping, we've been dropping productive capacity for a very, very long time.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the most dramatic I ever saw was in Australia, actually.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh I was with a friend, I was with a guy there um who was buying a hundred thousand-acre ranch in Queensland, in Queensland, and uh in 1820, and he had he had the the original herd book from the ranch in 1820 when the first you know uh British uh you know Europeans came to the country and um started running out the the aborigines.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and um for 40 years, Sina, from 1820 to 1860, for 40 years, that 100,000 acre ranch carried 28,000 cows.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And of course they had calves that they they sold.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they were in the it was a cow herd and they sold the calves every year.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: But think about that 28,000 cows.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Today, that ranch, same ranch, same acreage, same everything, same rainfall, same everything.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today it can only handle 4,000 cows.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, that's the that's the deterioration in the land base since 1820.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well I was on a I was on a ranch in uh um Colorado down by what's called Four Corners, you know, where Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, you know, they all come together there.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um I was on a ranch down there that um that in at the turn of the in 1900, it um it had so many families there on the ranch and so much production that they had a a ranch school for all the kids of the ranch families uh in this school, and um, and with all the cattle there, and it took, what do you tell me?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it took like 20 families to handle the ranch.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today it's one family, one person, and there's no school, and there's nobody there because it's just turning to desert because of overgrazing.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the this is the way it is all over.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I think people just don't appreciate the level of um Of ecological deterioration that's happened on a pretty grand scale on America's landscape.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had one of one of our second apprentice was from uh Mexico.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we went down to see him after he was done.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is 30 years ago or so.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we met his elderly grandmother.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she had grown up in you know 1900, 1910, uh, wealthy family, and uh she uh went to a boarding school, the family started to a boarding school in uh up in uh uh Victoria, and so they would drive up.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is the early days of the automobile, you know, 1915, 16.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: They would take her up there once a year and go up and get her and bring her back once a year.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And she said when she would go up there, up through, you know, um northern Mexico, uh, Sonora, you know, up into uh the capital city was Hermosillo, uh, she'd go up into Arizona.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: She said you could she she could never see what the landscape looked like because the vegetation, the grass and the trees were so tall against the highway, you couldn't see out from the it was like you're in a tunnel in a you know in the highway.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today, when you go down that same route, the same road, it is there is no vegetation.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is it's desert, completely desert.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and and this is and this is millions of acres.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you start thinking about the the composite ecological um uh uh devastation over these uh millions and millions of acres, it adds up to a lot fewer bellies can get filled.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's just that's just a fact.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and okay, go ahead.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is any of this related to um like water shortages like you talked about over in like the Arizona area?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, we hear about them not having enough water all the time and droughts and things like that.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: So is any of this related to that at all, or is this simply from the overground?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's uh now that's not that's not part of my beef discussion here.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you've gone down, you've gone down a little different path, but yes, um because here's the thing it's not how much water, how much rain you get, it's how much you keep.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so if the landscape cannot insoak water because the ground is unvegetated and therefore unaccepting, you can't slow down the raindrop, you can't soak it in, you can't spread it out, if that then what happens is the rain falls and it just runs off the runs off the landscape and doesn't stay.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so if as you as you overgraze, your water retentive capacity, the water retentive capacity on the landscape is in direct proportion to the amount of vegetative cover that slows down raindrops.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that makes sense.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, but let's say in those western states, are they actually getting less rainfall now?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And like in the and so we're having to irrigate more, or like you know, compared to let's say you mentioned in the 1900s, are they getting less rainfalls or are they literally have less vegetation from overgrazing, so they can't keep the water that they're getting?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's number two.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: The the rate, the rainfall, the precipitation is I mean, it fluctuates year to year, and there's you know, there's three and four year droughts and then three or four year you know abundances and things like that.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about Texas, you know, a few years ago.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's terrible drought, and then suddenly now they've had what three years of like double their normal rainfall, okay?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it it it um and I think these things have happened, you know, forever, okay.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's just there's just these things, which is why, which is why you desperately need to hold on to that water, which is why the beavers were so important, because the beavers, there were uh between 200 and 300 million beavers that that made ponds everywhere.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that stopped the water, it spread it and let it soak into aquifers and to underground springs and things like that, caverns and caves and all of those underground aquifers, you know, holding holding uh capacity.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so the the hydrologic cycle is tied in directly with the vegetative cycle, which on these grazed, grazed areas, I mean, Bureau of Land Management, BLM land.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been out there, I've done consults on ranches out there, and I mean, BLM land, look, Cena, they've got horses, thousands and thousands of horses on this BLM land, federal-owned BLM land, that are they're not sacred cows, they're sacred horses, and and they are completely denuding all the vegetation.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: A horse, a horse is way more aggressive on vegetation than a cow because a horse has teeth upper and lower.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: A cow only has you know uh lower teeth in the front.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um a horse has them uh upper and lower.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they can nip you and bite you so much um if you're not careful.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they've got all these wild horses.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, we talk about invasive species.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the wild horse is an invasive species.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they should all be shot, and that'll stress people.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they should be shot.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: They should be shot.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe they could be adopted and be therapy animals for somebody.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well then adopt them, but we're gonna need we're gonna need a lot more people to adopt the horse.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then look, 36 million acres right now, 36 million acres of America is used to house and feed recreational horses.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh all of that grass could go into cows that we can eat.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm I'm not having a vendetta against horses, but I am I am suggesting that there are there are things, there are macro things involved here.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and when people just when people just hear um uh you know one side of the story, oh well we you know we shut the Mexico cattle off, or you know, um rising diesel prices are making it harder to make a profit.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we can we can get into that too, but my point is that the um the hand wringing over this beef shortage, which is creating the beef prices, this hand wringing over it, in my opinion, I haven't seen anything that actually deals with the with the crux of the issue, which is we're running out of feed.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't have feed for them.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: But what but what are we doing?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: What we are doing is we are subsidizing corn and soybeans.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's where they're gonna feed them.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh by the billions and billions of dollars which which could be feeding cows.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that land could be in grass, it could be back into very productive prairie.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we are we are converting our best grasslands into crops which are even more environmentally devastating than overgrazing, and we're subsidizing that conversion, and and that subsidy of that conversion makes the makes the um the incentive, makes the financial incentive to hold ground in grass to grow cows, it it makes that less and less um attractive.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I could grow soybeans and be guaranteed a price and be guaranteed a bailout if the price goes down.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's no bailout for cows.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's no there's no uh um insurance for cows, all right.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so the whole the whole program, so you've got on the one hand, you've got you've got bad grazing management, you've got bad uh water management, and then you have an entire federal policy that incentivizes making grass growing inordinately expensive and uncompetitive in you know in in the agriculture sector.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we're subsidizing, if I'm hearing you right, we are actually subsidizing um this even like overgrazing using commodity crops.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that puts pressure, that puts pressure on on cattle to um to graze um more and more, you know, poorer land, and um and puts pressure on the market to keep the numbers up.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: So let me let me um let me turn now uh to to another element of this.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I I want you I want you to appreciate that the average cattle farmer is now 65 years old, five years older than the average farmer.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: As you age, you become less and less experimental.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Experiments are you know, they're costly, you know, sometimes they don't work.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the younger you are, the more willing you are to experiment with things because you can pick yourself up after a failure.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the older you get, I mean, this is this is just you know human, this is just the fact of human nature, the older you get, the less interested you are in um in experimentation.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So here we have here we have um cattle farmers aging.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have now people like me, people like uh Alan Williams, you know, Greg Judy, uh Ian Itchell Mint, Ian Mitchell Enns, there's there's no more Alan Savory, more and more of us around the world that are showing the additional profitability and productivity of a of a uh more um biologically managed grazing program.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: But to the 65-year-old farmer, man, you know, I'm not ready to try something new.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so they just stay in the rut, stay in the in the same thing, and uh and don't and and continue to just overgraze.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I see it here, I see it in our in our community in our neighborhood, our community.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I my heart breaks as I you know drive around, go to town.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: I see these old codgers out here climbing up and down on their tractors, and their fields are just grazed to the I mean it looks like you took a you know a fingernail clippers and and grazed off the pasture, and uh, and there's just there's just no grass.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I'd like to think that they would look at us and say, oh, that looks interesting.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's got you know 18-inch tall grass.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how we do that, you know.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but but they're they're not interested, they can't see it because, well, you know, we've just always done it this way, and this is the way it is, and you know, so there it is.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Which then brings me to the to the next big thread I want to thread in here.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Cattle have had low profits for a long time, they have not attracted young people.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: The average cattle herd, mama cow, mama cow, we're talking about mama cow herd.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The average cow herd in the U.S.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: is only 25 to 30 cows.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike chicken and unlike pork, cattle are still starting and and largely then the cattle industry, it's largely a um, you know, a a sink a single proprietorship operation.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um chickens and eggs, turkeys, pork have all been um industrialized in what's called a vertically integrated uh by by vertical integrators.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you know, you take uh Cargill or Tyson or Purdue, they own the hatchery, they own the chickens, they own the processing plant, they own the brand, and the farmer actually doesn't even own a chicken.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: All these great big chicken houses you see, the farmers don't own the chickens in there.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: The farmers only own the land and the house.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Another entity owns the chickens.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: They get to determine if and when a farmer gets chickens, if and when a farmer doesn't have chickens, when they get sold, how big they are, how long they grow, I mean, everything.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: They they own the feed, they bring the ration, they they dictate everything.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Cattle are not like that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Cattle are still extremely uh individualized out there.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the average herd is only 25 to 30 head.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Owned by a part-time farmer, it a lot of times it's kind of a hobby, it's a lifestyle thing.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who doesn't like to go out and you know um nuzzle their cows?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're pretty delightful actually when they're when they're um you know gentle.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and so what we have are are very um small, generally small herds.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: There are some big ones, but generally we have smaller herds.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're not vertically integrated, and over time the off-farm income generates what my mentor Alan Nation used to call heavy metal disease.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because there's enough money coming in from the off-farm job or whatever.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I can I can buy a tractor, I can buy a haymower, I can buy this, I can buy that.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's too much overhead.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, as Kit Farrow says, the reason that young people don't want dad's beef cattle operation is not because young people don't like cows.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, almost everybody likes cows, unless you're in the you know, World Economic Forum or something.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: But otherwise, you know, most people like cows.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want cows because too many of our cattle operations are hobbies.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're they're part-time hobbies.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what he says is young people don't want to inherit a hobby, they want to inherit a business.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they're smart enough to realize, whoa, this isn't a business, it's a hobby.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure I can land the same kind of job as my dad did, you know, in the 1970s uh eighties, as my dad did, and be able to work in a rural environment in town and um and have this nice little sideline.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so the young people aren't coming into it.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: The young people are not attracted to it.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where does growth come in any industry?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care whether it's Silicon Valley or whatever.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um growth comes from young people.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's who has the ideas, that's who has the the energy to experiment, the energy to innovate.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's youthfulness.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so the cattle industry as an industry is completely um subservient to this to geriatric practitioners.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I don't say this, you know, angrily, condescendingly, or anything.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's reality, Cena.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: It it's where we've come as a culture, as a culture, we have come to this crossroads, we've come to this place, and and um, and we've got these old codgers.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them are retired now, and they've got this little herd of cows, and and and and their kids and even grandkids don't see how in the world they can get into it.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: They'd love to get into it if it were profitable, but they don't see the profitability of it, and so they stay away from it, and so now the cattle prices go up.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: The shortage increases cattle prices so much that these old farmers actually can make some money, and what happens?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Trump comes in and kicks their feet out from under them with a$300,000 tariff free subsidized import and drops the price 25 cents.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what's just happened in our area, and I'm sure this is happening all over the country.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't checked with friends around, but but what's happening in our area?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're um I don't know when this podcast scena will air, but if it's you know within a couple of weeks, we're in we're in early uh first of October.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: So in the cow calf cycle, calves are born late winter, early spring.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: They get weaned and sold in the fall into the the stalker operations, and so these calves can be sold anytime from you know early September until Thanksgiving, you know, is kind of the the window, all right.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, in our in our county we have a uh a big sale barn, live live auction, you know, people that's where farmers bring their animals and they sell them at auction.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these things have been around for you know a century or more, and uh they're you know, they're they're part and parcel of the whole you know cattle industry that that's where cattle get sold.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I mean they can be sold privately, but um the lion's share of cattle gets sold at these live animal live auctions.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So what's happening now is because of Trump's um because of this this um 300 million metric ton import, the prices dropped 25 cents a pound, and the farmers in our area are sitting on their cattle.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're not selling them.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they they've watched, I mean, think about it.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a if you have a 500 pound calf, um gotta get my calculator out here 500 pound 500 pound calf, a 25 cent a pound deduction is a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now if you have if you have uh 40 of those, that's five thousand dollars.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: For a little, you know, for a little uh uh site operation, that's a big ding.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really big ding.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so these guys are upset about it.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: They are and they're saying, okay, we'll just we'll just hang on to them and wait till this 300,000 metric ton import thing uh comes off, and then the price will go up again, and we'll and we'll uh we'll sell our animals.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if if if I'm hearing you correctly, if enough farmers hold on to them, then Trump's plan is not gonna work.
• 43:08
  unknown: Right.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like he's he's trying to uh he's trying to make the farmers happy, right?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: But uh before the midterms, but and make the consumers happy, right?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you the 300 million, 300,000 uh metric ton import uh definitely did not make the farmers happy.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the goal was to make the consumers happy, but the backlash was so huge that then he did this executive order that we talked about to reduce, you know, uh regulations on slaughterhouses and all this stuff.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was done um to try to placate the backlash from the ranching and farming community on the cattle thing uh that was to placate the consumers.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you know the bottom line is it's exhausting to be in politics.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is, and you know what's exhausting?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's exhausting to try to micromanage and manipulate.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: a a market this big and and a global market this big uh you you can't micromanage it and and uh i i'm i'm literally literally just sitting here smiling at the fact that all these farmers in our area are sitting on their calves because it just shows the you know people people respond they respond to stimuli and and and if you if you take away their incentive they're gonna they're gonna be angry they're gonna be frustrated and and they're gonna they're gonna make decisions like well then I'm not gonna sell my calves now they can't sit on them for a year and they're gonna have to get rid of them sooner or later but what's what's really hurting in our area is so we we've been in a we've been in a a bit of a drought this summer um it has it hasn't been a a good season in fact our governor just yesterday I think the big news was our governor um spanberger uh just issued a um an emergency whatever it's called emergency order uh for Americ for uh Virginia farmers because of our lack of hay our our our low um hay numbers are there there's emergency stuff so now you can go down and you can get low interest loans to buy hay and all sorts of you know special government help to prop up um you know your operation so here we here we've got farmers in a in um an emergency a declared emergency state of not having enough feed they desperately need to sell these calves to drop their feeding you know the mouths the mouths they're feeding but they're not selling their calves because they're angry about the 25% price drop so they're keeping their calves and they don't have any feed so now they get to go down and take out a low interest loan to get feed that they don't need to feed calves that they shouldn't have because they're I mean it's just it's just a domino you know it just goes it just goes on and on and on.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: So so these are these are nuances that I'm not seeing in the news and I wanted to bring to our listeners here so that they so that they get a a a 3000 view picture instead of just whatever whiners are going to be on CNN and Fox News tomorrow you know ranchers or farmers they're they're gonna be whining about some real specific little policy and the truth is as an industry this industry Cena has been imploding it's been imploding for a long time it's been imploding ecologically it's been imploding economically it's been imploding socially you know the geriatric farmers it's been imploding for a long time and here we are at this at this at this nexus of all of these threads and and you just you can't you can't stick your finger in a wind wave it around and um and fix it in a day you you just can't so how do you actually fix it well and first of all I don't I can't see them inviting you onto Fox News to talk about this like yeah I I don't think this is the narrative that they want to put out there.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: No it's not it's a it's not because because it it paints it paints everybody as a bad guy.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: The government's a bad guy the the bad farming um bad farming is a is a bad situation and you know nobody wants to hear about bad farmers uh or or bad farming um and and so yeah it it it it it makes a friend of nobody i i get it so how do you fix it so kit pharaoh again pharaoh cattle company he he's uh for those of us people who don't know kit pharaoh is the largest seed stock producer of grass finished bulls in the world and um and he has built a he's built an empire in our industry um and and is one of the probably the wisest cattle um guru right now in if not the world certainly in the US so I respect him highly he's he's built a he's he he has a network of uh I don't know uh five or six thousand cows um and it's all grass based grass finished uh spanning some I don't know six states uh he he rents land from like 150 landlords I mean the guy is just he he's an amazing businessman he's just good anyway what he says is he says the cure to high prices is high prices in other words when the price goes high enough it becomes attractive people get in and then the price comes down you know because there's more production now um I don't know how that fixes the overgrazing problem uh but as you know if you've watched the news there've been there's been talk now at um at at Trump Trump headquarters of releasing some BLM land for more grazing and um you know I I don't know if that will happen or not but for sure the BLM land that I've seen U.S.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Forest Service land that I've seen uh being grazed is being devastated just as surely as private land and so I don't I don't see that as a real answer and and and the thing is if they would let the good farming the good management happen what they've got is they've got all these regimented um you know requirements that you can't have this many cows and this many cows on this much acreage you can't graze at this time of year you can graze at this time of year well you know the bison the bison um nobody brought hay to the bison uh nobody had tractors for the bison nobody fed corn to the bison uh and we arguably had more bison in North America than we do cows today in other words there was more production going on before the Europeans took it over now it wasn't just nature doing its thing it was in some ways but the Native American population was was huge uh pre-1492 you got to realize that by the time of Jamestown now we're getting into one of my little pet this this history pet subject by the time Jamestown happened in 1607 in the century between fifth between Columbus 1492 and 1607 in that century 90% think about that Cena 90% of the Native American population died so the the the the Native American population in 1607 at Jamestown was one tenth the size that it was a century earlier imagine imagine how much trouble the Europeans would have had coming into North America if the population had been what it was a century earlier.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there was still a whole you know it still wasn't easy but imagine if there'd have been 90% if it had been at full strength in fact archaeologists now show that Nebraska and Kansas and I'm I'm picking rural states I get it but Nebraska and Kansas had more people living them in them in 1400 than live there today.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow so so so this idea this was just some vacant open thing with bison running around um was it it couldn't couldn't be more um more mythical no it was a very vibrant there were confederations there were uh all sorts of of um you know treaties there were uh friendship there were wars lots of wars lots of battles uh but but this was an extremely dynamic and um no it you know didn't have the population that we have today I I I get that but it was a um there there was a lot of there was a lot of production going on and so um so the answer so you you ask how do you fix it how you fix it is get the government out of it and let high prices be the answer to high prices and when the prices go high enough they will be attractive enough to get people in and and they will be high enough to actually and and when they attract people in like young people young people will not do what grandpa did young people will not do what dad did young people will say hey I've heard about this uh controlled grazing and composting and you know carbonaceous diapers and stuff uh let let's try this because trust me the people the people who who love you know what I say they're not 70 years old very few the people coming to hear me buying my books they're 20 year olds they're 30 year olds okay and and and so so the high prices will eventually attract youthful energy and enthusiasm and that's the cure for it's the cure for how do we manage these things how do we innovate our protocols our standard operating procedures how do we change those all of those things heavy metal disease do we do more with management or with equipment that we have to uh pay a you know pay an arm and a leg for um I mean uh right now diesel diesel I don't know I don't know how high diesel fuel prices are going to go but um you know back whatever 10 12 years ago when diesel prices spiked we did a uh I dug in a little bit on our place and um after reading the umpteenth report that half of farm expenses are diesel fuel nationwide half of farm half of expenses are are fuel and so I looked at ours and ours is five percent five percent fifty percent compared to five percent okay let me tell you a a young person is interested in that a 70 year old ready to check out they're not interested in that I've done my time you know I'm good I've just got to figure out what to do with this thing and how long I'm gonna keep cows and how my kids are going to fight over it you know when I'm gone um you know that's what the 70 year old guy is talking about it's gonna be the youthful and the youthful are attracted um I I'd like to think that that that you know there are other things that attract but the but the the fact is human nature you know money attracts people and if there's money there young people will come in and when young people will come in they'll do something different than grandpa did and that that will move the needle ecologically economically emotionally and socially you know that makes so much sense Jill this reminds me of so just last night I took a self-defense class through our local sheriff's office and the sheriff was telling you know all these women how to get out of different situations that they might find themselves in.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the common theme was he kept saying you have to face your problem.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: So for example if somebody comes at you from behind and puts you in a chokehold like you're in the parking lot you're on your phone you're not paying attention and they put you in a chokehold most people will instinctively try to run away they'll try to like turn their head away from them and try to like break out of the hold and you you're not going to be able to do that right so again it's turning away from the problem and he said just remember in your head like muscle memory face your problem so literally you turn your head and you look at the person attacking you and get your hand here it opens up this um space here so you can breathe right and then you can do your move that he showed us but that was the resounding theme from the sheriff's office how to survive is face your problem.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when he said that I literally started you know tearing up a little bit because I thought that is such a great anthem for life.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're talking about here is them people not being willing to face your problem.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is the problem that we have in America and we're like oh let me patch it here let me make these people happy here so that you know I get the votes so that I get the YouTube hits so that I get the ratings on mainstream media.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about all these things on the fringe to keep people kind of in this almost in this fear space and the whole blame game but we're not willing to actually face the actual problem.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure what it's gonna take for the it it may take devastation.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know this is how it is when people get chronically sick.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: They usually don't do the changes uh in until they're to the point where it's gonna be no return you know like no coming back from it.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: So right I don't know I mean that's my take on it it's gonna have to hurt really bad for them to finally face it and get out of it.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean what do you say?
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I agree.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean most people don't wake up in the morning and say what change can I make today yeah most people wake up in the morning myself included and I want a routine you know I I want to be able to do what I did yesterday you know and there's there there's a business axiom that's a little bit related to this the business axiom says what got you here won't get you there and and there's a lot of truth to that too um and and and and as Kit Faro says he he says you know the average farmer today is stuck in the mind of a farmer in the 1960s that was his grandfather and and and and because a lot of generations are you know familial you've got two three generations so kid grows up being tutored by grandpa or or dad you know and and so then uh so then the average the average farm the the the decision making in that farm is stuck in the head of somebody you know 40 years ago and in the last 40 years we've seen land prices go up labor prices go up fuel prices go up uh land degradation I mean all these things have have happened and you can't you can't be stuck in the head of a four of a of a guy you know half a century ago you just you just can't and so you're gonna have to um make those changes well that's great i i hope I hope this hasn't been boring to folks I hope it's been you know interesting and instructive uh to help us get past just this this little 30-day window of you know what can we do like you know these little quick um quick recipe fixes that that all politicians live on and uh and too much of society lives on too and to realize it's been it's been a long time coming and it'll be a while getting uh you know getting getting rectified so question of the day for the question my question is have you decreased your consumption of beef lately due to the prices and if so what have you substituted for it chicken pork what have you done the the the interestingly Tyson increased their chicken production by about five percent thinking that people would go to chicken as the beef prices came up now they're dumping chicken all over the place because they over they overran their they overran it and instead of increasing five percent it only increased like two percent and so they've got all these you know those sound like tiny percentages but you know when you're running billions three percent is huge yeah you know if you're if you're growing um 50 billion three percent is quite a few but so what are they doing with this overage well that's why you're seeing so many uh chicken sales there's all sorts of chicken chicken sales uh all sorts of things i mean they're desperately trying not to just landfill them and throw them away they're trying to salvage them and so they're giving all sorts of huge price discounts and things to you know retailers to try to to try to move all the chicken okay wait so we're having so chicken prices going down from at least Tyson because they overestimated and then if more of these um cattle ranchers hold their calves I would suspect that the price of beef was going to go up even higher correct because now there's less supply uh well if there's enough of them there's actually there's a lot of wiggle room at this at this place i don't I don't think fed cattle are being held fed cattle aren't being held because there's because there's a very narrow window you know fed cattle we gotta we gotta move this thing it's ready to slaughter you know we can't we can't hold on to it very long um but the but the stalker the stalker cattle uh here these weanlings these these weaned calves there's a there's a pretty wide you know window there uh three to four months so I don't expect this temporary hold to really affect prices very much um what what I am fascinated by is how fast the farmers responded to the to the um to the 25 cent price drop um that they responded in a in in in a very very quick direct way you know I'm not gonna take it anymore you know you know that that that they that I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna just uh sit on my hands and wait um that that's a very very quick uh response to to something and I think um I think that that shows that shows a a kind of a collective awareness within the industry and a desire to fight back you know anything that they can yeah it it it it certainly has repercussions throughout because that means calves will you know um they'll just be moved around uh uh less and probably the biggest result it'll have is uh these farmers in our area at least that are doing this that are short of feed uh it's gonna stress their feed situation and uh come spring they might be dumping um you know dumping cold cows a little harder than they would otherwise which which that would bring that that would help stabilize uh beef prices but uh there there's a lot there's a lot to this and a lot to uh tease out and um and we'll and and time will tell but I I think I think the the big the big thing to understand is there are a lot of threads that made this tapestry and it's not as simple as an executive order to deal with it.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah well I'm curious to see after midterms if there's another executive order coming like what happens after this tariff situation with Argentina is expired and right right you know I I'm sure these ranchers are probably holding on to their calves to see what happens after that's done.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't any as we close out any prediction of what Trump's gonna do next oh my I um who who knows what Trump's gonna do next he's been uh all over the all over the place all over the board and uh has probably made as many enemies as friends at this point so uh I I don't I don't predict anything but uh yeah we'll we'll see we'll see where it goes but um the question is have you decreased your consumption of beef lately and if you have uh what is your substitute thanks for listening for another to another Beyond Labels podcast we appreciate all of you and uh look forward to visiting with you again next week