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High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching
- narrator 5y agoIntentionally destroying the beef market would be a lot of rich people's dream.
- LesZedCB 5y agocan you elaborate? considering we (humanity) are de-sequestering thousands of acres of captured carbon in order to create new cattle farms, i really hope by destroy you don't mean monopolize and grow.
- narrator 5y agoYes, many rich people would love everyone to be vegan, or at least eat insects instead of meat, mainly for environmental and animal rights reasons.
- seoaeu 5y agoWait, you're criticizing people for caring about the environment and animal rights?
- narrator 5y agoI never said it was good or bad. It's interesting that you would assume that.
- seoaeu 5y agoNah, 'intentional destruction' just doesn't have a very positive connotation
- xboxnolifes 5y agoHow would you say intentional destruction without using the words intentional or destruction?
- orang2tang 5y agoThis is happening to every industry. There is an obvious consolidation and massive wealth transfer still ongoing. Sickening
- imglorp 5y agoIndependent physicians come to mind as another example. Many have gone to work for large providers that can negotiate better rates with insurance.
- fsckboy 5y agofront page headline above the fold in the pre-millenial Hunter Gatherer Times, > This is happening to every industry. Sickening the article goes on to say: There is an obvious consolidation and massive wealth transfer still ongoing. There are people among us settling down on plots of land and growing more food than they can eat themselves, putting both hunters and gatherers out of work. Some of those unemployed hunters and gatherers are now sitting around and making more mocassins than their families can wear, and trading them with the farmers. Since there is already too much food and footwear, still others are reduced to making purely decorative clay objects and toys and trading them for food and footwear! And what about our shamans? There's this guy Moses who's got all the rules carved in stone for easy reference instead of oral story telling. All in the name of productivity and efficiency, alien ideas in our lands. These are scary times!
- beebmam 5y agoEasy enough to solve: tax wealth and redistribute it with a UBI.
- animal_spirits 5y agoThat is not easy to do
- disambiguation 5y agoexpectations: UBI utopia. reality: Corporate welfare and record levels of poverty.
- 5y ago
- coderintherye 5y agoPrevious discussion from when this was posted in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28877408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28877408
- giantg2 5y agoSounds like independents need to band together and vertically integrate by creating a meat packing facility that serves them and passes on the profits. Similar to, albeit on a much smaller scale, how the local grange can allow farms to plan who is planting what and organize who owns what specialized equipment and the reasonable rate for them to utilize it at others' request.
- azemetre 5y agoWhy not band together and force better conditions by the corporations? This is what unions are for, a place for labor to bargain fairly compared to capital. This will also have the nice benefit of raising the tide to lift all boats, rather than trying to diverge and course correct by oneself (raising cattle isn't comparable in skills or costs to running a meat packing facility).
- chrisseaton 5y ago> This is what unions are for They're independent companies. They aren't employed by anyone. They aren't labour they're owners. That's not what a union is for.
- WanderPanda 5y agoCorrect, that is what a cartel is for
- dehrmann 5y agoCartels and unions both tightly control the supply of what they are selling, so they're not all that different economically.
- meheleventyone 5y agoIsn’t a cartel more about illicit collusion (often outright illegal) rather than forming a public organisation to act collectively?
- voakbasda 5y agoAs a small farmer, I can tell you: independent small-scale farming is not profitable in any meaningful manner. Government is actively killing it, by giving away every possible concession to Big Ag. The food in stores is pretty much all garbage compared to food raised on small farms. It sickens me to see things go this way, but this is the reality that we have created.
- xu3u32 5y agoI am someone who usually gets their beef from costco, small middle eastern markets and sometimes when its on sale at the neighborhood grocery store (Publix). Would you mind sharing in what ways what I'm consuming is trash compared to what comes from small farms?
- AndrewUnmuted 5y agoIt's true; it is. This year I bought half of a red angus cow straight from the farm. It turns red when it gets cooked. It's a sight to behold. The stuff you buy at the costco has been frozen and unfrozen at least twice before you buy it. That's already a meaningful difference. They clearly treat it with some sort of coloring agent. In the 30 years I have cooked meat, nothing can prepare you for real beef that comes straight from the source. If it's USDA approved it ain't right.
- voakbasda 5y agoYou are absolutely correct. It all starts with better nutrition. CAFO cows that end up at the supermarket are fed low-quality grains and feedstocks, rather than grass that they were evolved to eat. The difference between grain and grass fed beef is amazing. USDA processing is a complete farce. I can only sell locally, because I am not willing to send my animals to such facilities. Instead, I can only sell here in my home state, because that's the only way I can say that my animals were born, raised, and died humanely on my farm. The butcher will drop them where they stand, eating a final meal in the conditions that they were raised. If I want to go with USDA in order to sell my products out of state, by the cut, or to resellers (e.g. restaurants), then I must load my animals onto a trailer, haul them almost two hours away, and allow them to suffer the trauma of that experience before finally being slaughtered in inhumane conditions. I can tell you right away: that experience severely damages the quality of the meat. Big ranches can afford their own USDA facilities, but small farms must share the slowly dwindling number of processors that still serve the public. There are less than two dozen in my entire state, so you currently need to book them further out than the entire lifespan of the animals that you plan to raise. Right now, my processor has completely booked 2022; a new farmer cannot get any animals processed there until 2023! Seriously, fuck the USDA.
- mannanj 5y ago
- dang 5y agoCould you please stop taking HN threads further into flamewar? We've already had to ask you about this, and you've continued to do it repeatedly. We end up having to ban accounts that do that, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this, we'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- iszomer 5y agoBreaking Points recently did a segment on this, if you're into this format of presentation: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3v7G9EDovQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3v7G9EDovQ
- Server6 5y agoI can't take Breaking Points seriously. It's basically a mainstream media dunkfest that rides the line of being right-wing full blown crazy - which I suspect is a good chuck of their audience.
- iszomer 5y agoBe that as it may (a "right-wing full blown crazy" thing), you're missing the point of my reply. They did a short interview with a ranch farmer named Bill Bullard on this very topic.
- president 5y agoNot a fan of the format but I do enjoy hearing about things that aren't covered or highlighted in the elite corporate press. Not everything has to be left vs right.
- fallingknife 5y agoI've seen several of their videos and I don't think this is correct (well the msm dunk fest is, but I'm fine with that). Do you have any examples of right wing crazy?
- IronWolve 5y agoLots of small farmers are selling their cows at a profit, selling to local people, and having a butcher cut the meat. You just need to be able to have freezer space for a 1/2 or whole cow. The problem with 4 major meat packing plants, 2 owned by china, they control the market, pay less to the farmer, and get more from the consumer. Some States in turn, are allowing producers to pack their own meat, making more money themselves. Lots of small mom/pop meat packers are popping up due to demand. The problem is larger producers who have hundreds-thousands of cows, they currently sell to the 4 major packers, and get paid less. >Miller noted that a rancher might lose $500 on a steer, while a processor might make $2,500 to $3,000 in profit. https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/opinion/editorials/2022/01/03/high-price-meat-its-time-look-packing-industry/9078458002/ https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/opinion/editorials/2022/0...
- xster 5y ago> The problem with 4 major meat packing plants, 2 owned by china Do you have a source? My google-fu doesn't seem to be strong enough
- captainredbeard 5y agoAnother compounding factor involves legality of selling meat. You can sell live animals (and fractions of them, e.g. 1/2 or 1/4), which are in turned butchered for the customer, but you can only sell cuts if they are slaughtered at a USDA-inspected facility, which is relatively rare. Since most folks don't want to buy that much beef at once, it severely curtails the audience.
- bshipp 5y agoWhat seems to be missing in the article is a reference to the Jack-in-the-box ecoli outbreak, BSE, and a number of other food safety outbreaks that dramatically impacted small abattoirs. I watched a friend close up his small butcher shop when he simply lost the will to meet all of the new and changing requirements that were mandated for him to stay in business. I'm not saying this was unwarranted, but those smaller slaughterhouses provided competition to the larger ones that kept price in lockstep with demand. With most of those gone, the remaining large players are able to set their prices to maximize their marginal revenue and not at marginal cost.
- nickstinemates 5y agoI love raising my own meat, and look forward to being 100% self-sustainable for all meat consumption across hunting, fishing, and livestock for a family of 5. Meat processing and butchery is very rewarding. Turning a whole pig into a mix of charcuterie, roasts, and sausage doesn't take a lot of time and is completely worth it. This is the opposite of cheap, and is not a 'profitable' endeavor by any means. Buying from the store would be a lot cheaper and a lot less work. But the difference is incomparable.
- jdavis703 5y agoThis all sounds pretty labor intensive to me. About how many hours per year do you think goes in to this? Like is this something that could be a weekend hobby? Or does it require more substantial lifestyle change?
- nickstinemates 5y agoLike anything - there's startup costs and then maintenance costs and a lot of it can be automated. But, tl;dr not much at all (10 mins/day for the bulk of the time) after infrastructure/a system is built. I'll give you a simple example with chickens. On average, we eat a whole chicken once per week. So to be 100% self sufficient, lets say we need to grow 50 chickens. A common cornish cross chicken goes from 0-5/6lbs in 6-8 weeks. If you want to be fair weather, then you buy in march/april, harvest in may/june. You can buy them online and they'll ship them to you direct, or in our case, to a nearby post office and we go pick them up. They cost about $1 each. So, you have 50 chickens arriving, what do you need? A place to put them (fairly small space requirement, actually,) food, and water. The baby chickens arrive, and you need a place to put them before they can survive the evening. I made a simple brooder box (2'x6'x3') using 1x4 douglas fir, osb board, and some steel mesh / simple frame for a lid/roof. This took me about 2 hours to build because I didn't use any plans and kind of just winged it. I could make it in 30 mins now. Next, I made a basic chicken tractor. This is a place for the chickens to sleep at night. Same idea as before, a simple box with some ease of access/cleaning stuff, and put it on wheels so you can move it about. During the day, depending on your ethics, they need a place they can stretch their legs and move about that is protected from predators. In my area, I have bobcats, racoons, opossums, and hawks. And I live in a residential area, so effectively dealing with them is a huge hassle and I have to work around them. A combination of movable electrical netting and making sure your chicken tractor is raised off of the ground at night is very important. I learned this the hard way, there was a lot of very unsettling things the racoons did. Lastly comes harvesting. It takes a couple of minutes per chicken when you're in a groove. The most time consuming is de-feathering and then vacuum sealing. You can do this all in 1 day with some friends, or spread over a few weekends if you're by yourself. So direct answers: > This all sounds pretty labor intensive to me There is effectively 0 required labor until harvest, which you can outsource too. You can buy all of the stuff I mentioned for higher startup costs if you want. > About how many hours per year do you think goes in to this? Let's be very conservative and say 20 minutes/day for 8 weeks. Then 10 minutes per chicken. 8x7x20/60=~19 hours, +9 hours for processing, 25-30 hours a year > Like is this something that could be a weekend hobby? A small daily chore like working out or taking a shower. The downside is no (long) vacation during grow/harvest. > Or does it require more substantial lifestyle change? The biggest lifestyle change I have seen is people understanding where their food comes from and coming to terms with the fact that in order to eat meat, an animal has to die. If you're over this hump, and have a little space that you're willing to dedicate to this, no change is required. Sorry for the essay, hope this helps.
- topkai22 5y agoI have in-laws in the independent ranching industry and the lack of slaughter house/packer capacity is a real problem. Around here at least supply and demand is working as there is a company trying to open up a new plant, but it is taking years to get past NIMBYism and environmental reviews. I wonder if an alternative model is to look into public/private partnerships where the government establishes the land and permitting for additional meat packing plants and then offers it as a lease package to private business to construct and operate. The Feds seem to be better at ignoring NIMBYism and they certainly have enough BLM land out west.
- markdown 5y agoAnyone interested in this should check out the Just a Few Acres Farm channel on youtube. It's a wonderful, wonderful channel that I've spent hours watching, and I'm not even American. https://www.youtube.com/c/JustaFewAcresFarm?app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/c/JustaFewAcresFarm?app=desktop
- knuthsat 5y agoDamn, first video I open is of castrating piglets. Can't believe it's done while the animal is awake and with no sedatives. Brutal. I'd rather have a farm raising plants than do that kind of stuff.
- markdown 5y ago> I'd rather have a farm raising plants than do that kind of stuff. I can understand that if you're vegetarian. If you eat meat though, what goes on in this farm is what you'd you'd want for the food you eat. BTW there is a good reason these animals get castrated, which is far more than we can say for all the millions of human babies that have the ends of their dicks chopped off in the US every year.
- cheese_goddess 5y agoI genuinely cannot tell whether you're outraging about circumcision or about trans kids having surgeries. "Ends of their dicks chopped off"? wa?
- the_only_law 5y agoGiven they’re specifically talking about babies, and the volume they mention, I think it’s safe to assume the former.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- samwisedum 5y agoBeef prices aren't even keeping up with inflation
- sputknick 5y agoI get my beef directly from a farmer (https://www.mountainrunfarm.com/ https://www.mountainrunfarm.com/) and he has not raised prices since 2017. If you can buy your beef at least 200 pounds at a time, and ideally a whole beef (~625 pounds) you can get grass fed beef for roughly $4.50-$5.00/pound including processing.
- mkoubaa 5y agoWill this be relevant in X years when cell based meat is cheaper and cuts off the low end of the market? I imagine high end will demand local so where does that leave industrial meat packers?
- smackeyacky 5y agoInteresting take on economists being enablers of monopolies - I guess we have known for a long time that you can "economist shop" and get any conclusion you want from the dismal science if you ask enough economists and here is a classic example. It's time the entire profession was demoted out of the policy levers of governments and placed with astrologers and other voodoo professions. A discipline that can't make accurate and reliable predictions is always going to be prone to conclusion jumping for pay and is worse than useless.
- iandanforth 5y agoDiscussing the economic viability of cattle ranching right now is a little like lung cancer patients debating tobacco subsidies. Maybe we should stop doing the thing that's killing us entirely.
- zapdrive 5y agoEconomists/scientists lie. Anti vaccine and climate deniers rise out of general mistrust of science. Scientists: surprised pikachu face!
- cupcake-unicorn 5y agoJust going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Hq8eVOMHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Hq8eVOMHs
- biztos 5y agoJust going to leave this description here too: 12-minute Anti-Omnivore propaganda video with some cutesy "animations" and climate change as the reason we should all be vegans, oh and also shilling for some SkillShare class by the producer.
- foxyv 5y agoDuring 2020 and the Covid pandemic I just stopped buying meat. It seemed ridiculous to keep paying 70-80% of my grocery bill for just a few pounds of very low quality meat. A friend asked me to pick up a ribeye steak for a date and it was $12 a pound and looked like it came off a starving middle aged dairy cow. Zero marbling and super lean for a ribeye. Dad used to buy steaks like that to grind up for burgers at $2/lb less than 10 years ago. Fresh vegetables have gone up too, but I'm not paying 20-40$ for a single 4 person meal anymore. Even the meat alternatives are starting to get competitive per pound. Even better is I can grow those in my back yard too.
- hispanic 5y agoIf you are interested in taking action, consider donating to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund - https://www.farmtoconsumer.org/ https://www.farmtoconsumer.org/ Buying directly from farmers is also good. But, those farmers are constantly being unfairly harassed by regulators.