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Why are America’s cattle ranchers beefing with Donald Trump? · REAP/SOW

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15"> <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 15"> <link rel=File-List href="FORKED%20Ep%2029%20Transcription_mix%20NO%20TIME%20CODE.fld/filelist.xml">  <link rel=themeData href="FORKED%20Ep%2029%20Transcription_mix%20NO%20TIME%20CODE.fld/themedata.thmx"> <link rel=colorSchemeMapping href="FORKED%20Ep%2029%20Transcription_mix%20NO%20TIME%20CODE.fld/colorschememapping.xml">  <style>  </style>  </head> <body lang=EN-US style='tab-interval:35.4pt;word-wrap:break-word'> <div class=WordSection1> Theodore Ross: Welcome to Forked. I'm Theodore Ross, Editor-in-Chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, and I'm joined by my co-host, Helena Bottemiller Evich from Food Fix. We're back. This is the first episode of our third season, and we have so much on tap as this country rushes headlong into midterm elections with food as maybe the most hot-button issue. We've got MAHA candidates in statewide races. We've got both parties in the heartland vowing to break up Big Ag, and the shadow of high food prices looms over everything. This episode is about prices, beef prices, why they're up, how to make sense of what Donald Trump is doing to bring them down, and where he's getting his ideas for how to fix things. Is it America's ranchers? Is it the global companies that dominate our meat supply? Is it Glenn Beck? I say it's Helena. Let's get to it. Helena, welcome back to Forked. Helena Bottemiller Evich: Thanks for having me back. It's September, and it's still too hot in DC. [laughs] Theodore: I hope you had a good break. Helena: I did. Did you have a good break? Theodore: I took advantage of it to do very little. How about that? Helena: Yes, that's good. Theodore: The biggest thing for me about the break is that, and this is for our video watchers, I didn't feel like I had to shave or cut my hair. [laughter] Theodore: Which was the nice thing. I appreciated that. Helena: I thought you were going to say you didn't feel like you had to keep up with the news, which was refreshing, grounding, and you unplugged. [laughs] Theodore: I wish I could say that. We're still working here at FERN, but no, it was mostly my personal hygiene, which took a nosedive. Let's jump right in. Before we get to any of the news, I want to talk about just the season itself. This is our third season of Forked. We've been doing this for a little while. Feel like this is going to be a great season. There's lots of stuff happening. There's the midterms coming up. There's food, as I think, like, really a central issue of the midterms. This is the other thing. Come November, and I'm just teasing this because we haven't started releasing tickets yet, but we're going to have a live taping of Forked, as you know, in New York City, our Brooklyn debut at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I'm very excited about it. We're forcing Helena to get on a train to come to New York City, to Brooklyn, no less, where I live, and we'll have a special guest, Tom Colicchio from Top Chef. Tickets are going to come out soon. I'm going to be talking about it on every episode. Helena: Love it. Theodore: You're going to hear about it from me a lot, but there it is. It is coming. All right, let's get some Forked. The thing that we like to do to begin every episode, if all of you can still remember so far back as to July, is something called the double take. Now, that's something in the food, politics, and policy world that just makes you do a double take. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. In this case, I just think it's a little strange. Last Friday, Donald Trump released a new executive order. It was called the Promoting Fair Competition in Livestock Markets and Expanding Market Access for American Meat Producers Executive Order. There you go. Now, its main components, we can get to in more detail in a bit, but its main components are that it vows to crack down on unfair market practices by the nation's meatpackers and processors. There are four, the Big Four, which control 85% of the market, and it would also potentially make it easier for ranchers, the guys raising the cattle who are forced to sell their animals for slaughter to the Big Four, who have inordinate, some would say monopsonistic control of the price to slaughter, process, and sell their own meat. There's a lot to talk about this, but let's just start with the throwing of the bones to the ranchers, where they could process their own meat. Now, you, Helena, last Friday, your newsletter, which I think is great, Food Fix, everyone should check it out, had a headline for the newsletter which was calling the food labeling and food processing aspect of this executive order an age-old fight. But that's not true, according to one former star of the Fox universe who is still out there plugging away: Glenn Beck. I came across this article from Beck, and here's a headline from it: "Did Glenn just give Trump the blueprint to save American beef?" Which is interesting until you realize it's from Glenn Beck's website. This was August 26, maybe a week and a half before the new executive order, and the same day that Donald Trump was on the Glenn Beck program. Helena, I don't know if you have any opinions about Glenn Beck, but tell me about this age-old fight that we're talking about. Helena: Yes, first of all, I think beef has been on a total roller coaster. Ranchers have been on a roller coaster. I normally, in Food Fix, focus a little bit more on the consumer side, so like meat at the grocery store, food prices, what's served in school meals, dietary guidelines, those kinds of things. I try to stay a little bit more away from what I call the production side, just because there's so much else going on, right? Theodore: Yes. Helena: It's different. We're talking about feed prices and drought and the processing consolidation, which is a huge, huge issue for ranchers. But this has been so dramatic, all of the chatter over beef, that last week I was fully in rancher land. They were so, so, so angry at Donald Trump. This actually goes back. We've been on this roller coaster two and a half weeks now, because you have to go back another week before these executive orders from Trump last week. Theodore: They've been on a roller coaster a lot longer than that. [Helena: No, no, a lot longer than that. Theodore: This dates to last year, even, since Trump has been playing around with tariff-free beef. Helena: With the cattle market. Theodore: Yes, exactly. Helena: Yes. These last couple of weeks have been particularly crazy. What really, really sparked so much fury from ranchers is that Trump announced that he'd struck a special deal to bring in 300,000 metric tons of imported beef, tariff-free, into the US to try to lower the price of ground beef. This made ranchers so, so angry. I've been covering Trump in agriculture for, I don't know, what. When did he come on the scene? 2015? Like more than a decade. I have never, ever, ever, ever seen- Theodore: They're mad. Helena: -a segment of agriculture this outwardly mad at him. Also, some people are saying they're done. "I've voted for this guy three times. He's been my guy. I'm done. This is just such a slap in the face." They were so angry because they were like, "Ranchers are finally making, in some cases, they're finally making a profit where they weren't. It's been really, really difficult." They're like, "Now you're going to tank the price of our animals?" It's market manipulation. A lot of these guys are small-c conservatives. They want the government out of their business. Theodore: They're deregulatory dudes, yes. Helena: They're like, "We want deregulation. We don't want your money. Get out of the cattle market." That's what they're saying. They're so, so angry. All of this anger, I think, spooks the White House, and then they set the table for these executive orders, just to give that context that there was so, so much anger, and I don't think these executive orders have done a whole lot to mollify these folks. There is a little bit more, like they're trying. Theodore: It's actually making it worse, though. Helena: I think, for all administrations, it doesn't matter if it's the Trump administration; you have to look at what they do versus what they say. The end result of bringing in 300,000 metric tons, which is, I think, like 600 million pounds. It's a lot of beef, 600 million pounds. Don't make me do math. It's a lot of beef. Theodore: It's not enough to really move markets. It's not that much beef. We eat a lot of beef in this country. Helena: Yes, it was enough to slightly lower the price for their animals the next day. I think that's what really made people angry. Yes, it's probably not even going to lower the price of ground beef, but it made ranchers really, really angry. This gets at this bigger problem that Trump has right now, which is populist versus corporation. It felt like, I think, for a lot of these ranchers, what I was hearing is they were like, "He's picking the big companies. He's picking the big packers. He's picking what the big market people want, not what the people want." That's what it felt like. It's a political nightmare for him, and I think it won't lower the cost of ground beef. Theodore: I don't think so either. Helena: There's a lot of analysts who are like, "You're not going to see this have that much of an impact. You've pissed off a lot of people, to not really do much." Theodore: This is a subject that at FERN that we do a lot of coverage on. We have more that's upcoming. I think what's interesting about some of this cycle of mad and then reaction that you're talking about with the ranchers, it's worth going into some of the details a little bit, because when that announcement for the importation of that quota of tariff-free beef was made, nobody knew where that beef was coming from. Helena: Oh, yes. Theodore: We still don't entirely, but it's pretty clear that it's Brazil and Argentina, right? Helena: Yes. Theodore: The fact that Argentina is its own case. Trump has a friendly relationship with the strongman-ish president of Argentina, but the case with Brazil is particularly telling because, first of all, Brazil is the largest producer of beef in the world. The largest meat-packing company and meat processor in the world is from Brazil, although they have a US [crosstalk]. Helena: It's one of our Big Four. Theodore: They are the biggest of the Big Four. They are also, through their chicken-producing subsidiary, the largest donor to the Trump inauguration, and then shortly after that inauguration, their IPO, which had been stalled-- Helena: It was like $50 million, I think, yes. Theodore: I don't remember the number. I just know it's the biggest. Helena: I think it was a big number. It was a big number. Theodore: Right after that, their IPO as a public company, which had been stymied for many years because of corruption allegations in Brazil, was able to go forward. If you're a rancher, you're looking at this, and you're like, "This doesn't make any sense." Helena: That guy was at the White House the day before? Theodore: Yes, Joesley Batista he's one of the two brothers who have control of JBS internationally. Joesley came to the White House and had a little chit-chat with Donald Trump. What it appears happened was that he said, “Well, look, we can fix this problem with beef prices if you lower a tariff on Brazilian beef and run this through the midterms, and everything will be fine if you do that.” Except, unfortunately for Trump, I suppose, this all got out. Everybody learned about this. It's a really difficult business. Then the other part where you're talking about focusing on the consumer end, where you're talking about beef prices in the stores, the way this scenario works with beef prices, you have the ranchers on one end. Their prices are being pushed down by the Big Four because they control so much of the market. They can dictate to them what they pay. Then, on the other end, because the Big Four control so much of beef, they can dictate, to some degree, to the grocery store chains and the restaurants, which are also highly consolidated, by the way. There's four chains that control a good part of the supermarket industry. The consumer is getting hurt on both ends. The prices are going down to the ranchers. The prices are going up to us. None of this is really set up to fix that. It's just a band-aid to artificially bring the prices down until the midterms happen. It's good politics, but it's not great politics. Let's put it that way. Helena: Yes, and you asked about labeling, so the reason this sparks the whole renewed fight about country of origin labeling, which means that it will actually say where the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered. The reason it sparks a new fight about that is because everyone online was like, “Okay, we're going to have imported beef, but we're going to be able to tell it was imported.” Right? Theodore: Yes. Helena: It's like that meme. They're like, “But I'll be able to see it on the label, right?” Theodore: Yes. Helena: It turns out, a lot of this product is commingled, and we don't have mandatory country of origin labeling, which means that these companies don't have to label where the meat is from if it's processed in the US. It just gets kind of obfuscated, and ranchers need-- Theodore: He needs Congress for that, doesn't he? Helena: Yes, he does. Theodore: The executive order is meaningless, right? Helena: He absolutely needs Congress for that, and so to have an executive order saying we're moving towards mandatory country of origin labeling is window dressing unless Congress moves. There is an interesting backstory here. We did briefly have mandatory country of origin labeling. By the way, we have it for many, many other things. Theodore: Pretty much everything else, yes. Helena: Yes. I mean, you can tell where your lettuce is from, you can tell where most things in the grocery store are from, but it got repealed for beef and pork specifically because Canada and Mexico took the US to the WTO and said this was unfairly targeting their livestock. It was, I think, fairly expensive to implement. I don't know that it would have been that meaningful for consumers, but the packers complained about the logistics of implementing it and the cost, so we had it for a couple of years, and then Congress repealed it because we were facing retaliatory tariffs. There's been this huge trade fight over COOL, as it's known in DC, or M-COOL for-- Theodore: Wait, what does that mean? Tell us what that means. Helena: COOL, Country of Origin Labeling, so C-O-O-L. Theodore: This is another acronym that I could mispronounce. I could go like, "Cual". [laughter] Helena: It's COOL for short. Country of Origin Labeling, it's been a huge fight. Ranchers have been truly hopping mad about this since it was repealed in 2015. That's what I meant by, like, it rips open this old fight, and now ranchers see an opening. It makes sense that they see an opening because you've got consumers going, “Wait a minute, I should know where the beef is from, right?” That makes logical sense. Then you have ranchers furious and saying, “Buy American beef, but you might not be able to tell where your beef is from, especially if it's ground beef or a processed food of some kind or a fast food joint, whatever.” It's really brought all this to a head, but yes, the executive order doesn't actually mandate- Theodore: Doesn't do much, yes. Helena: -Country of Origin Labeling. It asks the agencies to look at what the barriers are. They are formally urging Congress to pass it, but you know. Theodore: Ain't going to happen. Helena: Anytime we're going to bet on Congress doing something, you can bet that they won't. Theodore: That's right. Let's move on, but I just want to, like, one final note. Sorry, Glenn. It doesn't appear that you have given Donald Trump the solution. Helena: Glenn really wants to repeal meat inspection as well. He actually had Trump on his show. Trump called in-- Theodore: Two weeks ago. Helena: Yes, and Glenn Beck was like, “You just need to repeal meat inspection, essentially, that these inspections are crazy.” Look, we do have a lot of regulation on meat inspection. You can't sell meat in the US across state lines without it having been processed in the USDA or having USDA inspection. If you go back and you read the history, there's a lot of reason for that. You got to take that up with Teddy Roosevelt in the 1906- Theodore: Or Upton Sinclair, yes. Helena: -Meat Inspection. Go back and read that history because, for sure, to undo the mandate for meat inspection, you would need Congress. They are talking about encouraging more decentralized meat processing, but nothing actually changes as of this executive order. Theodore: One last thought for me on Glenn Beck, who I hadn't thought about in many years. He was last on Fox as a host in 2011. He no longer, and I'm sad to hear this for Glenn, sells his very high-end blue jeans. There was a period of time when he was like-- Helena: I didn't know this. Theodore: Yes, my stepfather, who's quite a clothes horse, I should say, used to buy Glenn Beck blue jeans. They were very nice. They looked good. Helena: What was special about them? Theodore: This was quite a while ago. I think it was at the beginning of the era where people were like, “Oh, I need to get good American-made, I believe, denim.” This is a long time ago. Helena: Interesting Theodore: These were like $150. I was like, “Good for you, stepdad, wearing the fancy Glenn Beck blue jeans.” Helena: Wow. Theodore: Let's move on to our next segment. That is Forks and Knives. That is the main meal, whatever we think is going on in the country. That is the most important thing that is happening right now. I want to stick with beef prices. This is my pet theory. I'm going to try to connect this fight over beef prices to food prices a little more generally. You can hear my theory, and you can tell me if you think there's anything here. I will connect this fight that we're hearing right now to the election in New York City of Zohran Mamdani. In my estimation, if you look back at the timeline, Mamdani is elected last year, and then coming out of that, Donald Trump starts to hear a lot of questions, and politicians all around the country are getting questions about affordability. That fact was already there, but that word becomes a political hot-button topic around that time. What he does, Donald Trump is, and this is the way he handles a lot of issues, is he says, “First of all, it's a non-issue. Second of all, I've already fixed the non-issue, and here I'm going to fix it now again.” In October of last year, if I get this correct, that's the first time that Trump uses the ability to lower tariffs on imported beef to try to control prices. He brings in a certain amount of beef from Argentina. The ranchers flip out. I remember reading this article. We talked about this on the podcast at the time. One rancher was quoted in the Times calling the lowering of tariffs, “A kick in the nuts.” The ranchers, they give good quotes. I like these guys. Trump then proceeds to blame the ranchers for the price of beef. They flip out again, say it's not their fault. It's the bad Big Four. Then all of a sudden the DOJ says they're going to start investigating JBS, the largest of the Big Four. Meanwhile, the price of beef keeps going up. Trump is meeting with Joesley Batista, and so on and so forth. We see this repeated cycle. Prices up, ranchers mad, Americans mad. Trump breaks his own tariff policies; ranchers mad again. Trump says he's going to get the big bad four and on and on. It doesn't really happen. What do you think? How do you like my blaming this all on Mamdani theory? Helena: [chuckles] Well, I don't know how much Mamdani is to blame, but it's interesting to bring him up because he has such a different response to it. I think part of it is that he's a local leader, and he can't do anything about USDA inspection, but I have been meaning to get more plugged into the whole grocery store thing he's trying to do up there. [Theodore: The public groceries? Helena: Yes, that's a very novel approach. Theodore: Well, you can tune in to FERN in a little while. We've already covered it, but we're going to be covering it some more soon. Helena: Oh, good. I'm very curious about that. I don't know that much about what he's doing, but it's interesting because it's just so unique. As far as I know, we haven't seen a [crosstalk]- Theodore: Well, it's not totally unique. Helena: -lately, for a mayor to embark on that. Theodore: For everybody out there, what the Mamdani administration has proposed is one publicly owned grocery store in each borough of New York City. This wouldn't happen right away. I believe the first one is supposed to be rolled out potentially this year in the Bronx, which is an area with large food deserts. The idea here is it's in, I believe, publicly owned real estate. They're going to bring in a grocery store there and offer a discounted basket of foods. It's not clear what's going to be in that basket. That would be at something like a 30% discount and available to New York residents. Public groceries are not new. There are other cities that have tried it and are currently trying it with varying levels of success. What Mamdani is doing, it's, well, New York's a big city, and the way they're going about it seems to be a little bit different than what we've seen in other places. Helena: Yes. No, it's interesting. I think with the food prices and affordability roller coaster, it really feels like right now Trump has a lot of people around him saying, "This is a huge issue. This is going to tank everything." Which I think it absolutely has the potential to do that because, by the way, it's not just food; it's housing, it's healthcare. The cost of things, it doesn't matter what income level you're at. Everyone is talking about this. Everyone is feeling this. It is the most urgent concern for- Theodore: No doubt about it. Helena: -most People in the country. I think the president has a lot of people telling him this, saying, "This is a huge issue." Then he'll post on Truth Social, "I'm doing something about this." It does show the limits of what a president can do, especially if Congress is asleep at the switch on these issues. Some people think food prices, food inflation, was a huge factor in plummeting the end of Biden's political career and- Theodore: It was one. Yes. Helena: -Kamala not winning. It was a huge, huge issue. This is this thing that you really can't escape for good reason. This is an essential part of living in America. He has said also a few times that he doesn't think about affordability and he doesn't really care to think about it very much, which for anyone else would have been a huge gaffe, maybe a career-ending gaffe. Theodore: There's no career-ending gaffe big enough to end Donald Trump's career. Helena: No. I do think that caught a lot of people like, "Oh gosh," this is such a big issue. The prices are not going down. I think the best we can say is inflation is slowing down. The increase in food prices is slowing, which is a good sign. Things are just so, so expensive still. Yes, I think voters are mad and have every right to be. Theodore: I want to turn this to the subject of politics more generally in some of the races that we're seeing for the midterms. Now, one of the things that we've already talked about on Forked quite a bit is the role of MAHA in the midterms. We talked about races in Iowa and different things like that. One of the things that I think is interesting in this particular beef crisis context is the race for the Senate in Nebraska. It's between an independent who's sort of a Democrat. His name is Dan Osborn, and Pete Ricketts, the owner of the Cubs. They had a debate last week in Grand Island, Nebraska, which is the home of a very large JBS meatpacking plant. We had somebody from there covering it. That was Ted Genoways. One of the things that came up in the context of this discussion that was really interesting in their debate which was at the state fair, where you can get fried spam on a stick. I love state fairs, by the way. Do you like state fairs? Helena: Yes, I went to the DC State Fair last weekend. Theodore: Food on a stick is good stuff. Didn't have any livestock because of GC, but they still have fried Oreos. Theodore: Yes. My brother lives in Minnesota, so they go to the state fair there every year. I love going to the state fair in Minnesota. I've been to the one in Texas. Anyway- Helena: Love it. Theodore: -during the debate, Ricketts, the owner of the Cubs and a billionaire, is debating with Dan Osborn, who got his start as a labor organizer, organizing workers at a Kellogg's plant, trying to get them to go out when they were going to ship jobs out. Ricketts, they're talking about the cost of food. The billionaire mentions that he had driven his mom to the grocery store to buy beef and was somewhat, I believe, upset at the price of beef, and people laughed at it. They just didn't believe, and maybe I don't believe, who knows, that billionaire Pete Ricketts is driving his mother to the grocery store to get beef. It's a difficult issue for Republicans or Republican candidates like Ricketts, who has so much money. There are people who aren't buying it. Helena: Wasn't there that classic example of George W. Bush didn't know-- Theodore: With milk. Yes. Helena: Yes. He had no idea what a gallon of milk costs. Theodore: It wasn't George W., though. It was George H.W. Helena: H.W, that's right. Theodore: It was the original. Helena: I'm sorry, H.W, yes. That kind of stuff really, really cuts through to people like, "Oh, you are not living a 'normal life'." You are out of touch. I think any good briefing before a debate of any kind would include a basket of foods and what they cost and what gas costs. I paid $5.19 a gallon for gas. I know I'm in DC and it's expensive. I'm in the city. Of course, you got to drive outside the city, but I needed gas. $5.19 a gallon. That's going to make you pay attention. You're like, "Oh, this is really expensive." I saw a rancher yesterday post on X, I think it was, that the price of diesel had surpassed the price of ground beef in this area. He was like, "And yet everyone's blaming us." They kind of have a point that everything is getting more expensive. The idea that we would still have cheap beef is also an interesting thing to think about. Theodore: The average price of diesel, I think, is now over $6 a gallon. I think I remember hearing on the radio that that is maybe as high as it's ever been, or been high as it's been for a long time. That's in many ways a byproduct of the war in Iran, but it ain't good. You talk about populism versus supporting big corporations; the meat prices aspect of it really has a populist appeal because genuinely we're talking about a rigged system. The Big Four, with JBS leading it, have been accused in courts pretty credibly of colluding to set prices and push down the prices on the ranchers. On the consumption end, this is the one little fact, and this has appeared in some reporting that Ted Genoways has done for FERN, also with The Guardian. He notes that McDonald's, a giant corporation, McDonald's is suing the Big Four over their monopolistic practices related to beef. If a big company like McDonald's can't fight back with its market control to keep beef prices down, you, me, us going to the store, Pete Rickett's mom at the grocery store buying beef, there ain't a lot they can do. Helena: I think one thing that's so hard about this issue in particular is just the amount of structural change that would be required to reset the system is massive. It's not just- Theodore: Talk about it. What would that be? Helena: -enforcing antitrust laws. We do have laws on the books. I'm not an expert in this, but we have laws on the books that are supposed to prevent against this or have remedies when it happens. There's that. There's antitrust enforcement generally, but then even if you did that, you would then have to build more plants or get more online. We have plants going offline now. Theodore: We're going in the other direction. Yes, there's fewer and fewer. Helena: Yes, these massive plants are shutting down because the cattle herd is at its smallest in 75 years or something. There's just not as much demand for that in the process. It is a boom-and-bust. It's a very cyclical market anyway, so there's that part of it. You would need to build more capacity. Then you basically have to rebuild the whole thing, the actual nuts and bolts of it. We used to have meat processing capacity everywhere in this country, and now it's really, really, really big, or there's some really, really, really small ones, and they're scattered around. This is issue that had left and right agreement. You see Thomas Massie and the congressman in Kentucky, outgoing, who's been a real thorn in Trump's side, and Chellie Pingree have worked together a lot on trying to get Congress to get more local and regional slaughter capacity. You could do more mobile slaughter units. There's things you can do, but it requires money and focus and policy and all of this really hard stuff. DOJ enforcement, we'll see what happens with that. It's difficult, right? Theodore: Intractable. Helena: It's turning around the Titanic is where we are. Theodore: Intractable is the word, yes. Helena: It would take a years-long dedicated effort to do that. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but it's just laying out that this is not like you flip a switch and you're like, "Oh, we have more competition." Theodore: It ain't easy. Helena: This is a really big one. It's something that not just ranchers, but consumer advocates, competition, market-- Theodore: Climate change. Helena: A lot of people, a lot of different experts in different places, economists, have argued something needs to be done, but that we really have not in any way shaken it up. Theodore: It's not in any way new, too. This is going back a while, 2015. The first article by Ted Genoways that I edited. Before I was at FERN, I was at The New Republic, and it was about Cargill, one of the large producers, moving their beef herd out of Texas and into Nebraska because of lack of water. We're not talking about new or easily solved problems here, but that's why we have politicians, and that's why we have a government, and that's what we expect them to do for us as a country. I'm not saying it's easy, but you could start by enforcing some of those Sherman Antitrust Law stuff. That would be a good step in the right direction, I would think. Helena: It seems like there's broad agreement on that too. Small-c conservatives are supposed to be for free market, and most people look at this, and they're like, "Is this a competitive free market?" Theodore: This is not a free market. No, no, no. Helena: It's not like it's actually overtly partisan, right? Theodore: Or it shouldn't be overtly partisan, yes. Helena: You did see Republicans come out and criticize, not Trump himself, but the actions of allowing more imported beef. There was real pressure on Trump to take more action to try to appease the ranchers. We'll see where it goes. I think food prices, I think the price of beef, I think these are all going to continue to be issues that we see in the headlines and that are going to come up in the midterms. This is, as they say in politics, real kitchen table issues, no pun intended. Theodore: Literally. Let's use the kitchen table to segue to our final segment, which is the good vibes. It's something in the food world that we can take a note of hope from, or at least maybe be amused by. Helena, you got anything, or do you want me to go? Helena: Well, mine's kind of a downer that I'm turning into. Theodore: All right, hit me because mine doesn't quite meet the building-- Helena: I feel like everyone's dying, Ted. [laughter] Theodore: Everyone's dying? Yes. Helena: Wendell Berry, Dolly Parton, so many-- Theodore: Hopefully present company excluded. Yes. Helena: No, I'm saying we're losing a lot of notable people. Theodore: I know, yes. Helena: My good vibe is that I think everyone should be reminded to go visit or call someone older, maybe, who they've been meaning to call. It's a good sign to do it. I happened to go visit a dear, dear aunt over the summer who I hadn't seen in a long time. I was so glad I did. She ended up passing away a few weeks later. I just feel like all of this is a good reminder that life is short and you should talk to your loved one. That's my bad vibe turned into a good vibe. That's a good reminder. Theodore: I think that's a great vibe. No, I think that's a great one. Helena: Just a lot of notable people are dying. Theodore: I think it's a great one. It reminds me of what's happening in my own family. Last week I went to the US Open here in New York. Helena: Cool. Theodore: I went with my two daughters, my son's in college so he couldn't go, and my dad. My dad is 80. We got there at 10:30 in the morning. My dad's a big tennis junkie. We stayed there. I went home with the girls at 7:30 at night because they were basically asleep. My dad, who's 80, goes, "Yeah, okay. See you guys later." Stayed for two more hours and watched more tennis. Helena: That's stamina. Wow. Theodore: That is. He also told me, I was so impressed by this. I want to share it. Other than the pandemic year where there was no audience at the US Open, he has been to the US Open every year since 1970 consecutively. That's before I was born. I was born in 1973. I feel like the US Open, if you guys are out there listening, I think some free seats, some good, maybe a couple of honey deuces should come our way next year. I don't know. Helena: There's got to be some kind of record. Theodore: There's got to be something. All right. My turn is also a bit of a dodge when it comes to the good vibe. It's not that it's a good vibe exactly. I just find it very amusing. I'm going to play a clip here. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States being very on brand. [audio excerpt] Shad Sullivan: We had a strategy in place on the things that we needed to talk about, but President Trump got sidetracked on wolves, and the wolf conversation took over. Jim Mundorf: He wanted to talk about those wolves. He wanted to see if they attacked people. Shad Sullivan: I was very impatient, and I was like, "All right, everybody, shut up about the wolves. I want to talk about these TRQs and this beef coming in." I didn't get to it, and that's okay. [end of audio] Theodore: That is a clip from a podcast. It's called Lonesome Lands. Helena: Yes. I know that pod. Theodore: It's Shad Sullivan. He is one of these very angry small-c, well, in his case maybe big-C conservatives who went to the White House last Friday to talk to President Trump about these TRQs. That means tariff-rate quota. I'm sure you know that, Helena, but that's for everybody else out there. Helena: I ignore that stuff. [laughs] Theodore: Okay. I just think it's amazing that they're in the White House, the picture of them sitting there, and Donald Trump is like, "Well, what about the wolves? Tell me about the wolves." That I find to be a good vibe on my end. I don't know if you agree. Helena: There's some good memes. There's some very funny memes about that now. Theodore: About the wolf quote? That's already out. Helena: About wolves. I would say there are some inside jokes that ranchers are posting in meme form about how Trump wanted to talk about the wolves. You should go find them. Theodore: All right. Let's call it on that note. Helena, why don't you tell all those folks out there in Forkland about your newsletter, Food Fix? I am a devotee and a subscriber, but everyone else should be too. Helena: Yes. Get on the list at foodfix.co. You can get the email for free every Friday. There's a lot going on. Last Friday we wrote all about beef mania. That's what I called it. If you're trying to figure out what's going on in food world, it can be a good read. I try to keep it. It's substantive, but fun to read, and, yes, go get on the list. Theodore: I heartily encourage everyone to do so. Helena, it's so great to be back with you on Forked. Helena: Good to be back. Theodore: Yes. I will see you next time. Helena: See you soon. [music] Theodore: Forked is a production of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Our executive producers are me, Theodore Ross, and Tom Laskawy. Our sound engineer is Cody Nelson. Our producers are Dom Altomari and Dylan Halverson. Our hosts are Helena Bottemiller Evich and me, Theodore Ross. To find out more about FERN and donate to support our independent nonprofit reporting, go to www.thefern.org. <o:p> </o:p> </div> </body> </html>