Interesting that guys say that. The "tinfoil" scuttle is that black hats planning big false flag op as they circle the drain. Take down the grid for a week or two in the summer heat and let chaos reign. Maybe they'll get checkmated, maybe not. Just reporting...

Those $6.99 per pound steaks are now $10.99 per pound.

My God! You killed it! You should be jailed for torturing a steak like that!

Be a good thing to see more beef production. Just talking timber with Dad today and he tells me that some of the old cotton and pasture tracts that we watched get planted to pine in the eighties which has glutted the market the last twenty years is now being put back into cattle pasture or flooded for catfish ponds.

As dry as the western half of the US is getting, beef could get real expensive. 15 to $22 ribeye is the norm around here.

I'm hoping the price farmers get for their beef improves. I know the grocery stores are making money and the meat Packers.

Just Joe being in office "did it."
Russia was Trump's "female dog", so to speak.
The world has no respect for the current feeble man in office.

Some annelist are estimating the packers are making $1300 a stear and only owning it for 30 days .

Me and the neighbor split a 1/2 of another neighbors steer recently. when we went to pay him -- i had no problem with the price because it was what we had agreed upon and was within the "norms" of the going rate for beef. My neighbor had a huge problem with the price solely on the basis that he made too much money on that steer. I don't care if he made 100% profit or 100% loss on that item. that is his business. He delivered a product to me at a price that i was willing to pay ---- both happy. My question to you is how many $ do you think it costs them to get it to the end user? Does it matter if it is one day or a year that they have to carry it? Just a hint -- I don't buy any meat at the supermarket. However there is a huge " time cost" into making my own.

H20Rat- I suppose it goes back to the age old question if they are figuring in their time involved in raising a beef as a labor cost (are they paying themselves an hourly rate) or is their labor discounted and the "money made" is just other non-labor costs subtracted from overall revenue coming in from what they get from the beef? I have farming relatives and have heard some of them and plenty of others b**** about how much they make and yet they are still doing it year in, year out.

i'm probably a bad business person about my side gigs because I don't figure out what my labor costs are. There is always the argument people make such as, "well, you could have made more working at McDonalds". Yeah, well, I don't want to work at McDonalds, I like doing what I do on my own time...

marty i always like seeing you post and reply. you say just enough to make me think WHAT DOES HE KNOW? or think is coming.
curious what are you seeing or hearing?
tom

The packers have an illegal monopoly going. Nobody is making too much feeding cattle today at Market value of a fat steer and cost of grain, especially if it's a hobby guy fattening a few head for locker beef. Now if he was selling you the processed beef at retail price he might be making some $.

Our little grocery store has their own butcher, which id imagine pushes the prices down. Been payin 2.49/lb for 80 percent burger and either chuck steak or sirloins for 4.99-5.99 lb. wasnt until this week the burger went to 3.60. Cheap steaks are still there but ribeye are 18/lb. Who in their right mind are paying this much?

My Dad was a fat cattle buyer for almost his entire working life. He's been dead now for a little over 12 years but I can remember him talking about and showing me his profit or loss margins from the packer he worked for. At that time I would say most of the time those margins were between the break even point and $100 dollars a head in either direction. Beef was sold in the box market. Too heavy an animal would be met with a steep discount because the finished product wouldn't meet the uniformity needed for the market. He started buying in Illinois and Iowa and later moved to Wyoming and then bought from the big feedlots out west. Towards the end of his career he bought 80,000-100,000 head per year. Those producers he worked with from farmer to rancher to feedlot operator were regular business partners. If either party screwed the other the relationship was broke. I remember one producer that verbally agreed to sell at a certain price to Dad and then reneged on a nickel higher bid. Dad never did business with that individual again.
I can't say one way or the other if the packer companies collude but I can say the buyers sure were not out to screw anyone.
The cattle market was like the stock market and the buyers were required to keep track of how many cattle were available for future trading and what the other packers were paying. They also were constrained by how far out the packing plants were booked with cattle. If the kill orders were filled then there was no need to aggressively buy cattle but if there was a need for more cattle to keep the packing plants and obligations going prices advanced. This all changed on a constant basis.
At Dad's funeral many in the industry were in attendance. I was very proud of Dad's legacy in the cattle business.

It takes a lot of dedication to work through the weekly grind of a commodity industry such as beef. Not for most of the "get rich, let's make a huge score" type of mentality. Just the dedication of being ethical and doing a good job. I'm sure your dad had the satisfaction of being part of keeping a nation well fed. I suspect during your dad's days there was a bit more packer competition then there is now. Really only 4 big companies in the USA running the packing show now. The largest, now called JBS, is owned by the Brazilians. Brazil has the most cattle of any one country in the world, substantially more the the USA...

Who in their right mind would eat 80% burger?

U like it leaner or fattier? Pretty standard around here. 85/15 or leaner gets expensive real fast.

I prefer 80/20.
I like a juicy burger and if I need or want leaner, its Deer burger.

Me

You know what 80/20 is and why they dont package it in clear plastic?