Shadowing Practice: How America broke its beef industry - Learn English Speaking with Video
Elige un modo de práctica
Cada modo abre una sala de práctica a pantalla completa.
307 oraciones
Si las oraciones son demasiado cortas o largas, haz clic en Editar para ajustarlas.
1
America's beef industry is broken.
2
I'm sure you've noticed that beef prices are crazy right now.
3
In June, the average price per pound of ground beef was the highest it's ever been.
4
At the same time, our national cattle herd is at its lowest point since the 50s.
5
Okay, so simple supply and demand, right?
6
Not quite.
7
As I've nerded out about the beef supply chain, the one thing I can guarantee is that there's nothing simple about this industry.
8
Tyson Foods, whose biggest business is actually beef, lost $426 million on it last year.
9
At the same time, our cow -calf ranchers, the ones who'd actually grow the herd, had their most profitable year ever recorded, and yet there's very little sign of expansion.
10
Nobody in this story is behaving the way they're supposed to.
11
The industry has run on a 10 to 13 year cycle for over a century.
12
Historically, it's self -corrected every time, but we might be at the moment that cycle isn't just jammed.
13
It could be completely broken.
14
So what the is going on with America's beef industry?
15
Hello sir.
16
Good to meet you in person.
17
I'm James.
18
Where do you want me parking this bad boy?
19
Just right here.
20
All right, I just pulled up to meet Justin and we're already in the midst of work.
21
There's one thing I've learned about cow -calf ranching, there are no days off, so let's try to
22
keep up I just want to show you some of these calves because
23
if they've been they were born a month earlier than a
24
lot of them we're gonna see for example what number is
25
he 30 this is a pretty good calf a lot of
26
muscle structure I think you might like the camera yep he's kind of showing off I wouldn't be surprised
27
if he doesn't weigh 600 pounds I mean he's pretty big already this is where buying
28
and selling happens as they come in we would merchandise those
29
cattle to the highest bidder how many cattle would we see here on a Friday you know
30
when we're busy in the fall can be eight nine thousand head at a time i suppose
31
that prairie dog will never show his face today yeah now
32
that we're prepared once they get to be a big colony they'll just take over the ground
33
and that's why we don't want them started here there he was running oh yeah you know
34
if you took a snapshot of the last 25 years less
35
than five of those are profitable years to understand what's broken
36
in america's beef industry we have to start with the cattle industry, the live animal side of the supply chain.
37
Think of it like a relay race, except every runner has to buy the baton from the one handing it to them.
38
It all starts at the cow -calf stage, the foundation of the entire industry.
39
The goal here is simple, one healthy calf from every cow, every year.
40
There are about 622 ,000 cow -calf operations in the country, and the average has just 47 cows.
41
More than half of them have fewer than 20.
42
Once a calf is weaned off the mother, it's sold.
43
The rancher decides when that happens, but the market decides how much it's worth.
44
Next comes the backgrounder.
45
The goal here is cheap weight gain on grass or wheat pasture.
46
Once a calf is big enough, boom, sold again.
47
Then comes the feedlot.
48
Time to fatten them up.
49
This is where the diet shifts to add weight fast using grain.
50
This stage is where real scale shows up.
51
About 7 % of feedlots handle 88 % of fed cattle.
52
82 of them can hold more than 50 ,000 cattle at a time.
53
Once the cattle have fattened up enough, boom, sold again.
54
Now we're at the packing and processing stage.
55
This is where cattle become beef.
56
The animal is slaughtered, broken down into large cuts, and shipped out as what the industry calls boxed beef.
57
This is the real choke point of the whole chain.
58
Four companies, Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef buy about 85 % of the steers and heifers sold for slaughter in the US.
59
Two of those four are controlled by Brazilian companies, by the way.
60
From there, retailers and restaurants sell the beef to you.
61
So there's our animal, five handoffs, five separate businesses.
62
Picture the whole chain as an hourglass, hundreds of thousands of ranchers at the top, millions of consumers at the bottom, and the narrowest point towards the end is controlled by just four companies.
63
One thing I hadn't anticipated, being the idiot that I am, is how hard it is to get groups of them.
64
To do what you want them to do, yeah.
65
Yeah, given how much land you have, you know.
66
God, it is gorgeous out here though.
67
Yeah, just to be nice if it was a little greener.
68
Yeah.
69
from everything i read about the cattle cycle the record high
70
prices are the thing that's supposed to drive ranchers to holding back more heifers
71
and expanding their herd is that a big misunderstanding did it used to be
72
that way well i think it was when we increase production here
73
and history will tell us we will increase production at some point
74
and then the prices will come down some and that's a supply
75
and demand that should work that way we should let
76
that work the way it's supposed to work
77
and for more than a century it did work that way
78
but a lot has changed inside the self -correcting system the industry calls the cattle cycle
79
when the herd shrinks cattle get scarce
80
and prices climb those high prices should convince cow calf ranchers to expand
81
but expanding means holding back heifers
82
that would otherwise keep moving down the supply chain this is
83
the heifer paradox to make more cattle later ranchers have to pull cattle out of the beef pipeline now
84
so to fix tomorrow's shortage, they have to make today's shortage worse.
85
Because of a cow's biology, it takes three years for all of those calves to hit the market.
86
Eventually, enough new cattle reach the market that supply catches up and prices fall.
87
Low prices convince ranchers to hold back fewer heifers, cull more cows, the herd shrinks, and you're back at step one.
88
To break it all down, prices move at market speed, but supply moves at cow biology speed.
89
That mismatch is the entire cycle.
90
From beginning to end, the cycle usually takes a little over a decade, but now the cycle seems to be jammed.
91
Cow -calf ranchers are coming off back -to -back record years.
92
The price signal is screaming expand, and yet there is very little sign of meaningful herd expansion.
93
So what are ranchers seeing that the market isn't?
94
Justin can see this industry from almost every angle.
95
His family has been ranching for four generations.
96
He sees hundreds of ranchers come through his sale barn, and he's the president of the United States Cattlemen's Association.
97
And who are you taking me to go see?
98
We're going to go see Clay Berklin, my banker
99
and he definitely has a perspective on what interest rates can have to do with expanding
100
and the drought and what's never said it seems like when we talk about how good the prices are
101
is how high our input costs are also at all -time highs
102
if you gave a thousand dollars an acre for this land
103
you could never just get out of debt by running cows on it so
104
when we talk about debt it's it's significant the numbers are so big today that if you
105
expand 10 percent you can be looking in the millions of
106
dollars pretty easily it's a big gamble what do you think
107
is the biggest misconception the average person has about this industry
108
and i guess specifically cow cap ranchers well i don't think
109
i can have this conversation without mentioning yellowstone where they think everybody
110
that has a ranch has a helicopter and a shiny black dually pickup
111
but that's made for tv entertainment the people
112
that do it every day i'll tell you it's just a
113
hell of a lot of work i think some of the heartiest people in the world are the cattle industry
114
because we've seen the ups and the downs and all we do is dust ourself off and come back for some more.
115
We get talked about as a commodity sometimes and it's not a commodity, it's a way of life.
116
This is my guy right here.
117
We're going to move some cows to a different pasture, is that right Jesse?
118
This is definitely the first time I've held this camera on a horse, that's for sure.
119
It's interesting to hear even through these record prices
120
which certainly you're not complaining about right
121
but that's not necessarily the thing that's going to drive expansion nope
122
and i wished it was that simple
123
but it definitely is not i think the biggest driver for
124
most of our guys is environment i mean it decides it for you
125
if you don't have the feed
126
or you don't have the grass to run them it's impossible
127
to go into any kind of expansion i'll just tell you
128
about the fire drive by it on the to town
129
and then lightning started it back over that hill
130
and it burned right up to this road i mean look
131
at the difference between the left side of the road
132
and the right side of the road here oh my god
133
this is i mean it's devastating the state wildland guy measured
134
it at like 240 acres in a lot of ways that's
135
money literally getting burnt up in the fire oh absolutely
136
so is it currently a drought that you're in yes we i think
137
that we're in what they call a d4 drought
138
which was some of the worst the drought now goes from
139
canada to mexico through the heart of cow calf country
140
so you're not going to have a lot of luck talking those guys into expanding when
141
hay has gone from 100 a ton to 300 a ton
142
if you're going to keep some of your own heifers
143
that means this year calves bring in somewhere near 2500 a head you're not going to have
144
that income you're going to keep her as a calf you're
145
going to run her over the winter then you're going to turn her out on grass
146
and then she'll get bred
147
and then it's a whole nother spring around before she has a calf
148
and then we don't know where we're going to be price wise.
149
The last time we had a great expansion opportunity a lot of folks got stung pretty badly.
150
They bet on the rising market and some of those cows took almost 10 years to pay for.
151
Do you run into situations here where a rancher who's maybe doesn't have heirs
152
or isn't encouraging his kids to get into the business is here essentially selling the lot
153
and cashing out yeah
154
and i mean i think in this environment we may see some more of
155
that this fall i would say
156
that the rancher's 401k was his cow herd an older generation
157
at some point is just going to say you know what
158
i don't need to expand anymore i'm going to start to open up the parachute
159
and coast into my comfortable landing
160
and i'm going to sell 2 500 cows at the highest
161
price in my life it's really hard to blame them
162
if i offered you the highest return ever on your retirement portfolio
163
and you could step away would you i'm in my middle 50s
164
and i'm one of the youngest people you see i think
165
there's a big generational turnover to happen here uh in the next 10 years
166
and and we've got to make sure
167
that we've got these young people in a place where they can come back
168
and work on these ranches it feels to me there are like 15 to 25 things
169
that are determining whether a rancher is expanding and probably one
170
or two of them we have control of
171
and the rest of it is out of our control okay so
172
if you can't blame ranchers alone what else is jamming the
173
machine the obvious place to start is four companies controlling 85 % of the processing.
174
You would think with beef at record high prices, they would be printing money.
175
They're not.
176
Tyson's beef business lost $426 million in 2025.
177
And in the first quarter of 2026, JBS's North American beef business posted a negative EBIT of $267 million.
178
So why are they losing so much money?
179
Cattle are so scarce that packers are paying record prices just to keep their plants running.
180
But the price of the beef they sell isn't rising as fast as the price of of the cattle they buy.
181
And because these massive plants cost about the same to run full or half empty, fewer animals means higher processing costs per head.
182
The response from the packers has been to shrink the machine.
183
Over the last couple of years, the major packers have been closing, converting, or selling beef facilities to match the smaller cattle herd.
184
But losing money doesn't mean losing power, because a big change from all that consolidation is not just what the packers earn, it's how they buy cattle.
185
So in 2005, over 52 % of all of the cattle were sold to the packers in the competitive cash market.
186
Now, the number is approximately less than 20 % remains in the cash market.
187
Wow.
188
And 80 % is now procured to these non -competitive means.
189
Meaning instead of bidding on finished cattle out in the open at auction, packers lock in a lot of their supply through contracts.
190
The price on most of those contracts is tied to whatever the shrinking negotiated market says that week.
191
So the roughly 20 % still trading in the open cash
192
market helps establish the price for the 80 % sold through contract.
193
Every major plant closure means fewer places for finished cattle to go.
194
Fewer slaughter slots means more leverage for the packers controlling them.
195
They can slow down their cash buying because most of their cattle are already lined up through contracts.
196
Now, these contracts exist for a reason.
197
They can guarantee the feedlot stability and predictability and can lock in a slaughter slot.
198
And if the cattle get a good USDA grade, they can earn a premium.
199
For an individual operator, signing that contract can make complete sense.
200
But add up enough individually rational decisions and you hollow out the open market
201
that the entire chain relies on to figure out what cattle are actually worth.
202
Then there are beef imports.
203
Here's where it gets political.
204
As ground beef was at record highs, the president told reporters that prices were higher than we want, but going to be coming down soon.
205
You know, Trump, he stands behind me every day.
206
When you're working, you can see him right back there.
207
I'm a big Trump supporter.
208
He's a capitalist, but he don't know shit about the cattle industry.
209
Argentina's quota quadrupled.
210
Brazil's tariff was cut by two -thirds, and beef futures were down before the ink dry.
211
More recently, the administration approved another 300 ,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings under the lower tariff rate.
212
Maybe that helps the price of ground beef, which no one can guarantee, by the way.
213
But to a rancher deciding whether to keep a heifer for two years, it sends a very different message.
214
The market can find foreign beef faster than you can grow a cow.
215
If they're going to take tariffs off of some of that meat coming in, why is beef going to be cheaper?
216
It's not.
217
It's going to line the pockets of the four big packers
218
because they'll buy it cheaper and they will have less quotas on it.
219
That doesn't mean they're going to pass it on to the consumer.
220
And then it hurts the backs of the American rancher
221
because they have an unfair undue advantage over production costs that we don't have.
222
So to ranchers, imports are competition, but to packers, they're another source of supply and revenue.
223
Remember, two of the big four packers are Brazilian owned.
224
So the same companies losing money buying American cattle are selling the Brazilian beef flowing in to replace it.
225
The reality is everybody in this chain has bad years.
226
That's just how a cyclical industry works.
227
But a bad year doesn't cost everyone the same thing.
228
The packers are diversified.
229
They can have a losing quarter or year
230
and lean on other sources of protein or operations in other countries to pay the bills.
231
But to ranchers, a bad year can be existential.
232
So in terms of resetting the cattle cycle, increased imports are keeping beef on shelves without the price getting insanely high,
233
and consumers are not opening the other release valve by buying much less of it.
234
And that's the thing about everything we've gone through.
235
Not one of these problems broke the industry on its own.
236
Through the last 40 years, consolidation left four companies buying and processing most of the country's cattle.
237
The packers bought less and less fed cattle, at free auction.
238
Repeated droughts reduced the herd, land, feed, equipment, labor, and financing became more expensive, imported beef became a much larger part of the system,
239
less and less of every dollar spent on beef made its way back to the ranchers, and two of the four dominant packers came under Brazilian control.
240
Every one of those problems was survivable by itself, but together they took out almost every shock absorber this industry has.
241
So now what?
242
How do you fix it?
243
Well, there's no shortage of ideas.
244
The first is to force the major packers to purchase some minimum share of their cattle through open auction
245
and less through contract.
246
And it nearly happened.
247
We were getting close to getting that minimum requirement for negotiated trade that we were pushing so hard from.
248
And NCBA and their big affiliates.
249
They were the ones fighting us.
250
The NCBA is the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the biggest and best funded group in the industry.
251
And the fact that they fought a reform other cattlemen wanted tells you something about how this industry works.
252
What used to be the National Cattlemen's Association, they merged in the mid -90s with the meatpackers themselves.
253
A lot of people in the cattle industry feel like they're
254
pushing harder for the bee in there than they are the seed.
255
You would think an industry in this situation would unite, But so many people I spoke to disagree on what the biggest problem is
256
and what the solution to that problem should be.
257
All the people I deal with, they own their own business.
258
They're an individual empire of their own, so to speak.
259
They're very used to making their own decisions.
260
So when I have to make them agree that the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west, sometimes that's hard to do.
261
You know, it's hard to get 400 ,000 heads together.
262
It's easy to get four packers heads together, and they're taking advantage of that.
263
Another proposed solution is what the industry calls MCOOL, mandatory country of origin labeling, which was a thing until 2015 when it got repealed.
264
But this month, the Senate Ag Committee added it as an amendment to the Farm Bill, which still needs to pass.
265
But even if it passes, it's hard to know how much of a difference it would make or whether consumers would actually pay more for American beef.
266
They don't have the same safety protocols.
267
They don't have the same standards of raising cattle as we do.
268
So we don't want that to ride on the backs of the American rancher.
269
We're not saying it's going to be a big market driver necessarily, but we think it's an important piece and the consumer can choose.
270
The list of solutions goes on forever.
271
Enforced antitrust laws, build more regional processing plants, help young ranchers access cheaper capital.
272
All of those could help, but not one of them is simple.
273
That is the challenge here.
274
Almost every fix helps one stage of the relay race, but creates a new cost or problem somewhere else.
275
And an industry that can't agree on the diagnosis is definitely not going to agree on the cure.
276
People in the industry fear that the worst case scenario is that eventually all of our beef will be imported from overseas.
277
And that is not an entirely irrational fear.
278
It already happened with our lamb industry.
279
Are they being dramatic because this is their livelihoods?
280
Maybe, but can you f*ing blame them?
281
I can't.
282
I feel for these people.
283
Like I said, most of the producers, the people below the packing stage, are made up of normal people like you and I, likely working land their family has been on for generations.
284
This means something to them in a way that's difficult for me to articulate.
285
And to be honest, I feel for the packers too.
286
I don't want anybody losing money or losing their job.
287
And there are plenty of normal people like you and I that work there too.
288
Be mad at our government and the system we're in.
289
That is what has failed us.
290
Most of what we just walked through wasn't a corporate decision.
291
It was a policy decision over the course of 40 years under both parties.
292
I thought by the time I was this age or in this position in my life,
293
I wouldn't, you know, probably have some answers or maybe have a real thought as to exactly what the next 5, 10, 15 years might look like.
294
And man, I don't know.
295
You just got to get up every day and push and enjoy all the moments you have.
296
Look, to me, no animal is more tangled up in this country's identity than a cow.
297
Cowboys, the steakhouse, a backyard cheeseburger, and the people raising them, they were never the ones who broke this.
298
They just have the most to lose.
299
When's the last time you had a vacation?
300
Well, it depends on what you call a vacation.
301
We took a trip to Canada one time, and the first thing we did is stop at the first auction barn we saw.
302
We're kind of junkies that way.
303
That's just the way it is.
304
That's not a vacation, Justin.
305
It's probably not in most people's world, but it is for us.
306
When's the last time we were on a beach?
307
Not much interest in that time.
Descargar app
Todo lo que necesitas para hablar con fluidez
Pronunciación con IAEvalúa cada oración
Práctica de IPADomina cada sonido
VocabularioConstruye tu banco de palabras
Juego de vocabularioAprende mientras juegas
📺 Mismo canal
✨ Recomendar Video
B22
43 oraciones
Lab-grown meat is on the rise — here's how it is made
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
375 oraciones
Trucking West Thru Oklahoma, Kansas & Colorado | Part 1
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
439 oraciones
Ancient Animals The Viking Raiders Saw
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
229 oraciones
Does America have a gun problem? | 60 Minutes Australia
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
126 oraciones
Animating 1-Star Fast Food Reviews
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
38 oraciones
The importance of detasseling for agriculture innovation and making corn more weather resilient
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
335 oraciones
I Started With $600... Now I Make $10B/Year
Business EnglishDaily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
285 oraciones
How To Eat To Build Muscle & Lose Fat (Lean Bulking Full Day Of Eating)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
182 oraciones
Every Generation Thinks This Time Is Different: The AI Job Myth
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
132 oraciones
Why is everything getting so expensive?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
259 oraciones
The End of Malaysian Durians
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B2336 oraciones
How Used Car Dealerships Actually Make Money?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
¿Por qué practicar el habla con este video?
Aprende inglés con videos como este te permite sumergirte en contextos reales y complejos, ideales para la práctica de inglés hablado. El video analiza una industria clave, usando un lenguaje coloquial pero informativo que refleja cómo se habla en situaciones profesionales y cotidianas. Al hacer shadow speech (imitar la pronunciación y el ritmo), mejoras tu fluidez y aprendes a expresar ideas estructuradas. Además, el tema genera preguntas y debates, lo que refuerza tu capacidad de comunicar opiniones, un skill esencial en el inglés hablado.
Gramática y expresiones en contexto
- "Not quite": Usado para negar suavemente una idea anterior. En el video, responde a "Supply and demand", mostrando que la situación es más compleja. Es útil para corregir o matizar información en conversaciones.
- "I've nerd it out about": Expresión coloquial que significa "investigar a fondo". Muestra cómo el inglés informal usa verbos como "nerd" como acción, ideal para hablar de hobbies o intereses específicos.
- "There's very little sign of expansion": Estructura para indicar la ausencia de algo. La frase usa "there's" + sustantivo + "of" para describir situaciones, un patrón común en el inglés hablado diario.
Trampas comunes de pronunciación
Mejora la pronunciación en inglés con estos ejemplos del video:
- "Tyson Foods": La "y" en "Tyson" se pronuncia como "ai" (no como "i griega"), y "Foods" termina con un sonido suave de "s" (no "z").
- "Weaned off": "Weaned" se pronuncia "win-d" (no "wee-ned"), y "off" tiene un sonido corto de "o" (similar a "of" pero más fuerte).
- "Feedlot": La "ee" en "feed" es larga, y "lot" se pronuncia "lot" (no "lote"). Evita acentuar la segunda sílaba.
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — una acción que empezó antes y continúa | has been ranching · have been closing |
| “Used to” used to + verbo — un hábito o estado pasado que ya no es cierto | used to be |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | you've noticed · it's ever been · I've nerded |
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | is broken · isn't just jammed · were born |
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.