Shadowing Practice: How America broke its beef industry - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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America's beef industry is broken.
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I'm sure you've noticed that beef prices are crazy right now.
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In June, the average price per pound of ground beef was the highest it's ever been.
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At the same time, our national cattle herd is at its lowest point since the 50s.
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Okay, so simple supply and demand, right?
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Not quite.
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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.
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Tyson Foods, whose biggest business is actually beef, lost $426 million on it last year.
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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.
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Nobody in this story is behaving the way they're supposed to.
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The industry has run on a 10 to 13 year cycle for over a century.
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Historically, it's self -corrected every time, but we might be at the moment that cycle isn't just jammed.
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It could be completely broken.
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So what the is going on with America's beef industry?
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Hello sir.
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Good to meet you in person.
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I'm James.
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Where do you want me parking this bad boy?
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Just right here.
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All right, I just pulled up to meet Justin and we're already in the midst of work.
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There's one thing I've learned about cow -calf ranching, there are no days off, so let's try to
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keep up I just want to show you some of these calves because
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if they've been they were born a month earlier than a
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lot of them we're gonna see for example what number is
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he 30 this is a pretty good calf a lot of
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muscle structure I think you might like the camera yep he's kind of showing off I wouldn't be surprised
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if he doesn't weigh 600 pounds I mean he's pretty big already this is where buying
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and selling happens as they come in we would merchandise those
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cattle to the highest bidder how many cattle would we see here on a Friday you know
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when we're busy in the fall can be eight nine thousand head at a time i suppose
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that prairie dog will never show his face today yeah now
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that we're prepared once they get to be a big colony they'll just take over the ground
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and that's why we don't want them started here there he was running oh yeah you know
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if you took a snapshot of the last 25 years less
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than five of those are profitable years to understand what's broken
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in america's beef industry we have to start with the cattle industry, the live animal side of the supply chain.
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Think of it like a relay race, except every runner has to buy the baton from the one handing it to them.
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It all starts at the cow -calf stage, the foundation of the entire industry.
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The goal here is simple, one healthy calf from every cow, every year.
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There are about 622 ,000 cow -calf operations in the country, and the average has just 47 cows.
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More than half of them have fewer than 20.
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Once a calf is weaned off the mother, it's sold.
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The rancher decides when that happens, but the market decides how much it's worth.
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Next comes the backgrounder.
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The goal here is cheap weight gain on grass or wheat pasture.
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Once a calf is big enough, boom, sold again.
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Then comes the feedlot.
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Time to fatten them up.
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This is where the diet shifts to add weight fast using grain.
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This stage is where real scale shows up.
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About 7 % of feedlots handle 88 % of fed cattle.
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82 of them can hold more than 50 ,000 cattle at a time.
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Once the cattle have fattened up enough, boom, sold again.
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Now we're at the packing and processing stage.
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This is where cattle become beef.
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The animal is slaughtered, broken down into large cuts, and shipped out as what the industry calls boxed beef.
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This is the real choke point of the whole chain.
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Four companies, Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef buy about 85 % of the steers and heifers sold for slaughter in the US.
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Two of those four are controlled by Brazilian companies, by the way.
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From there, retailers and restaurants sell the beef to you.
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So there's our animal, five handoffs, five separate businesses.
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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.
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One thing I hadn't anticipated, being the idiot that I am, is how hard it is to get groups of them.
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To do what you want them to do, yeah.
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Yeah, given how much land you have, you know.
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God, it is gorgeous out here though.
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Yeah, just to be nice if it was a little greener.
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Yeah.
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from everything i read about the cattle cycle the record high
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prices are the thing that's supposed to drive ranchers to holding back more heifers
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and expanding their herd is that a big misunderstanding did it used to be
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that way well i think it was when we increase production here
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and history will tell us we will increase production at some point
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and then the prices will come down some and that's a supply
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and demand that should work that way we should let
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that work the way it's supposed to work
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and for more than a century it did work that way
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but a lot has changed inside the self -correcting system the industry calls the cattle cycle
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when the herd shrinks cattle get scarce
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and prices climb those high prices should convince cow calf ranchers to expand
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but expanding means holding back heifers
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that would otherwise keep moving down the supply chain this is
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the heifer paradox to make more cattle later ranchers have to pull cattle out of the beef pipeline now
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so to fix tomorrow's shortage, they have to make today's shortage worse.
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Because of a cow's biology, it takes three years for all of those calves to hit the market.
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Eventually, enough new cattle reach the market that supply catches up and prices fall.
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Low prices convince ranchers to hold back fewer heifers, cull more cows, the herd shrinks, and you're back at step one.
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To break it all down, prices move at market speed, but supply moves at cow biology speed.
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That mismatch is the entire cycle.
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From beginning to end, the cycle usually takes a little over a decade, but now the cycle seems to be jammed.
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Cow -calf ranchers are coming off back -to -back record years.
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The price signal is screaming expand, and yet there is very little sign of meaningful herd expansion.
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So what are ranchers seeing that the market isn't?
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Justin can see this industry from almost every angle.
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His family has been ranching for four generations.
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He sees hundreds of ranchers come through his sale barn, and he's the president of the United States Cattlemen's Association.
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And who are you taking me to go see?
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We're going to go see Clay Berklin, my banker
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and he definitely has a perspective on what interest rates can have to do with expanding
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and the drought and what's never said it seems like when we talk about how good the prices are
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is how high our input costs are also at all -time highs
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if you gave a thousand dollars an acre for this land
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you could never just get out of debt by running cows on it so
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when we talk about debt it's it's significant the numbers are so big today that if you
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expand 10 percent you can be looking in the millions of
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dollars pretty easily it's a big gamble what do you think
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is the biggest misconception the average person has about this industry
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and i guess specifically cow cap ranchers well i don't think
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i can have this conversation without mentioning yellowstone where they think everybody
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that has a ranch has a helicopter and a shiny black dually pickup
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but that's made for tv entertainment the people
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that do it every day i'll tell you it's just a
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hell of a lot of work i think some of the heartiest people in the world are the cattle industry
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because we've seen the ups and the downs and all we do is dust ourself off and come back for some more.
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We get talked about as a commodity sometimes and it's not a commodity, it's a way of life.
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This is my guy right here.
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We're going to move some cows to a different pasture, is that right Jesse?
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This is definitely the first time I've held this camera on a horse, that's for sure.
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It's interesting to hear even through these record prices
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which certainly you're not complaining about right
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but that's not necessarily the thing that's going to drive expansion nope
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and i wished it was that simple
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but it definitely is not i think the biggest driver for
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most of our guys is environment i mean it decides it for you
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if you don't have the feed
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or you don't have the grass to run them it's impossible
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to go into any kind of expansion i'll just tell you
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about the fire drive by it on the to town
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and then lightning started it back over that hill
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and it burned right up to this road i mean look
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at the difference between the left side of the road
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and the right side of the road here oh my god
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this is i mean it's devastating the state wildland guy measured
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it at like 240 acres in a lot of ways that's
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money literally getting burnt up in the fire oh absolutely
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so is it currently a drought that you're in yes we i think
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that we're in what they call a d4 drought
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which was some of the worst the drought now goes from
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canada to mexico through the heart of cow calf country
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so you're not going to have a lot of luck talking those guys into expanding when
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hay has gone from 100 a ton to 300 a ton
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if you're going to keep some of your own heifers
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that means this year calves bring in somewhere near 2500 a head you're not going to have
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that income you're going to keep her as a calf you're
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going to run her over the winter then you're going to turn her out on grass
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and then she'll get bred
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and then it's a whole nother spring around before she has a calf
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and then we don't know where we're going to be price wise.
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The last time we had a great expansion opportunity a lot of folks got stung pretty badly.
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They bet on the rising market and some of those cows took almost 10 years to pay for.
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Do you run into situations here where a rancher who's maybe doesn't have heirs
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or isn't encouraging his kids to get into the business is here essentially selling the lot
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and cashing out yeah
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and i mean i think in this environment we may see some more of
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that this fall i would say
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that the rancher's 401k was his cow herd an older generation
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at some point is just going to say you know what
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i don't need to expand anymore i'm going to start to open up the parachute
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and coast into my comfortable landing
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and i'm going to sell 2 500 cows at the highest
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price in my life it's really hard to blame them
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if i offered you the highest return ever on your retirement portfolio
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and you could step away would you i'm in my middle 50s
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and i'm one of the youngest people you see i think
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there's a big generational turnover to happen here uh in the next 10 years
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and and we've got to make sure
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that we've got these young people in a place where they can come back
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and work on these ranches it feels to me there are like 15 to 25 things
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that are determining whether a rancher is expanding and probably one
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or two of them we have control of
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and the rest of it is out of our control okay so
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if you can't blame ranchers alone what else is jamming the
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machine the obvious place to start is four companies controlling 85 % of the processing.
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You would think with beef at record high prices, they would be printing money.
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They're not.
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Tyson's beef business lost $426 million in 2025.
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And in the first quarter of 2026, JBS's North American beef business posted a negative EBIT of $267 million.
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So why are they losing so much money?
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Cattle are so scarce that packers are paying record prices just to keep their plants running.
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But the price of the beef they sell isn't rising as fast as the price of of the cattle they buy.
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And because these massive plants cost about the same to run full or half empty, fewer animals means higher processing costs per head.
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The response from the packers has been to shrink the machine.
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Over the last couple of years, the major packers have been closing, converting, or selling beef facilities to match the smaller cattle herd.
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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.
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So in 2005, over 52 % of all of the cattle were sold to the packers in the competitive cash market.
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Now, the number is approximately less than 20 % remains in the cash market.
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Wow.
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And 80 % is now procured to these non -competitive means.
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Meaning instead of bidding on finished cattle out in the open at auction, packers lock in a lot of their supply through contracts.
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The price on most of those contracts is tied to whatever the shrinking negotiated market says that week.
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So the roughly 20 % still trading in the open cash
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market helps establish the price for the 80 % sold through contract.
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Every major plant closure means fewer places for finished cattle to go.
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Fewer slaughter slots means more leverage for the packers controlling them.
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They can slow down their cash buying because most of their cattle are already lined up through contracts.
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Now, these contracts exist for a reason.
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They can guarantee the feedlot stability and predictability and can lock in a slaughter slot.
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And if the cattle get a good USDA grade, they can earn a premium.
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For an individual operator, signing that contract can make complete sense.
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But add up enough individually rational decisions and you hollow out the open market
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that the entire chain relies on to figure out what cattle are actually worth.
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Then there are beef imports.
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Here's where it gets political.
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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.
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You know, Trump, he stands behind me every day.
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When you're working, you can see him right back there.
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I'm a big Trump supporter.
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He's a capitalist, but he don't know shit about the cattle industry.
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Argentina's quota quadrupled.
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Brazil's tariff was cut by two -thirds, and beef futures were down before the ink dry.
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More recently, the administration approved another 300 ,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings under the lower tariff rate.
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Maybe that helps the price of ground beef, which no one can guarantee, by the way.
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But to a rancher deciding whether to keep a heifer for two years, it sends a very different message.
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The market can find foreign beef faster than you can grow a cow.
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If they're going to take tariffs off of some of that meat coming in, why is beef going to be cheaper?
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It's not.
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It's going to line the pockets of the four big packers
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because they'll buy it cheaper and they will have less quotas on it.
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That doesn't mean they're going to pass it on to the consumer.
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And then it hurts the backs of the American rancher
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because they have an unfair undue advantage over production costs that we don't have.
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So to ranchers, imports are competition, but to packers, they're another source of supply and revenue.
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Remember, two of the big four packers are Brazilian owned.
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So the same companies losing money buying American cattle are selling the Brazilian beef flowing in to replace it.
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The reality is everybody in this chain has bad years.
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That's just how a cyclical industry works.
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But a bad year doesn't cost everyone the same thing.
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The packers are diversified.
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They can have a losing quarter or year
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and lean on other sources of protein or operations in other countries to pay the bills.
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But to ranchers, a bad year can be existential.
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So in terms of resetting the cattle cycle, increased imports are keeping beef on shelves without the price getting insanely high,
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and consumers are not opening the other release valve by buying much less of it.
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And that's the thing about everything we've gone through.
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Not one of these problems broke the industry on its own.
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Through the last 40 years, consolidation left four companies buying and processing most of the country's cattle.
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The packers bought less and less fed cattle, at free auction.
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Repeated droughts reduced the herd, land, feed, equipment, labor, and financing became more expensive, imported beef became a much larger part of the system,
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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.
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Every one of those problems was survivable by itself, but together they took out almost every shock absorber this industry has.
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So now what?
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How do you fix it?
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Well, there's no shortage of ideas.
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The first is to force the major packers to purchase some minimum share of their cattle through open auction
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and less through contract.
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And it nearly happened.
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We were getting close to getting that minimum requirement for negotiated trade that we were pushing so hard from.
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And NCBA and their big affiliates.
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They were the ones fighting us.
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The NCBA is the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the biggest and best funded group in the industry.
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And the fact that they fought a reform other cattlemen wanted tells you something about how this industry works.
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What used to be the National Cattlemen's Association, they merged in the mid -90s with the meatpackers themselves.
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A lot of people in the cattle industry feel like they're
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pushing harder for the bee in there than they are the seed.
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You would think an industry in this situation would unite, But so many people I spoke to disagree on what the biggest problem is
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and what the solution to that problem should be.
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All the people I deal with, they own their own business.
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They're an individual empire of their own, so to speak.
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They're very used to making their own decisions.
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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.
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You know, it's hard to get 400 ,000 heads together.
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It's easy to get four packers heads together, and they're taking advantage of that.
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Another proposed solution is what the industry calls MCOOL, mandatory country of origin labeling, which was a thing until 2015 when it got repealed.
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But this month, the Senate Ag Committee added it as an amendment to the Farm Bill, which still needs to pass.
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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.
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They don't have the same safety protocols.
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They don't have the same standards of raising cattle as we do.
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So we don't want that to ride on the backs of the American rancher.
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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.
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The list of solutions goes on forever.
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Enforced antitrust laws, build more regional processing plants, help young ranchers access cheaper capital.
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All of those could help, but not one of them is simple.
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That is the challenge here.
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Almost every fix helps one stage of the relay race, but creates a new cost or problem somewhere else.
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And an industry that can't agree on the diagnosis is definitely not going to agree on the cure.
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People in the industry fear that the worst case scenario is that eventually all of our beef will be imported from overseas.
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And that is not an entirely irrational fear.
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It already happened with our lamb industry.
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Are they being dramatic because this is their livelihoods?
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Maybe, but can you f*ing blame them?
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I can't.
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I feel for these people.
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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.
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This means something to them in a way that's difficult for me to articulate.
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And to be honest, I feel for the packers too.
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I don't want anybody losing money or losing their job.
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And there are plenty of normal people like you and I that work there too.
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Be mad at our government and the system we're in.
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That is what has failed us.
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Most of what we just walked through wasn't a corporate decision.
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It was a policy decision over the course of 40 years under both parties.
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I thought by the time I was this age or in this position in my life,
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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.
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And man, I don't know.
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You just got to get up every day and push and enjoy all the moments you have.
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Look, to me, no animal is more tangled up in this country's identity than a cow.
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Cowboys, the steakhouse, a backyard cheeseburger, and the people raising them, they were never the ones who broke this.
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They just have the most to lose.
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When's the last time you had a vacation?
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Well, it depends on what you call a vacation.
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We took a trip to Canada one time, and the first thing we did is stop at the first auction barn we saw.
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We're kind of junkies that way.
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That's just the way it is.
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That's not a vacation, Justin.
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It's probably not in most people's world, but it is for us.
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When's the last time we were on a beach?
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Not much interest in that time.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
If you’re prepping for IELTS speaking practice or just want to sound more natural in everyday English, this video is a goldmine. It mixes casual conversation (“What the fuck is going on?”) with industry-specific terms (“cow-calf ranchers,” “feedlot”), giving you real-world context to practice. The speaker’s tone shifts from explanatory to conversational, perfect for shadowspeaks—mimicking rhythm and intonation. Plus, the story’s relatable (who hasn’t noticed high beef prices?) keeps you engaged, making english speaking practice feel less like work and more like a chat.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
- “Not quite.” A common way to gently disagree. Use it to soften a correction: “You think it’s supply and demand? Not quite—there’s more to it.”
- “Nerd it out about” (informal). Means to dive deep into a topic. Great for casual chats: “I could nerd it out about coffee for hours.”
- “Run on a cycle”. Describes recurring patterns. Useful for explaining trends: “The fashion industry runs on a 2-year cycle.”
- “Jammed” (metaphorical). Means stuck. Try: “My phone’s jammed—can you help?”
Common Pronunciation Traps
The video has tricky words that trip up learners. “Tyson” (tie-suhn, not tee-suhn) and “weaned” (weend, not wayned) are easy to mispronounce. The speaker also uses casual contractions like “there’s” and “it’s” with quick, connected speech—perfect for shadowing app practice. Listen for how “I’m sure you’ve noticed” flows into one phrase, not three. Mastering these nuances will make your shadow speak sound more native.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to making |
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | has been ranching · have been closing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've noticed · I've nerded · has run |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is broken · isn't just jammed · were born |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.