A Cattle Conspiracy

Hey guys,

Our current president is no stranger to making headlines, but recently he has said and done things that has caused some outrage in the ranching world. We have always kept politics out of our newsletters and social media posts, but it would appear some clarity on what is going on in the beef and cattle world are needed.

For those of you that have been with us since the beginning, you may recall our “Cattle Crisis" email series from 2 or 3 years ago. We were telling people to buy bulk beef sooner rather than later because cattle and beef prices were poised for a meteoric rise. Well, the high cattle markets are here, and so is the government.

A perfect storm of weather, economics, politics, disease, and urbanization has sent cattle prices soaring.

First, severe prolonged drought in most big cattle areas meant ranchers had to reduce herd numbers. Many just simply sold out, the average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58 years old. As cattle prices started to climb and drought persisted, many older ranchers took that as an opportunity to sell the herd and retire.

Montana is starting to become the Billionaire’s playground.

Land prices are artificially inflated because of this and we are seeing historic ranches sold to wealthy out of staters or organizations like the American Prairie Reserve and often this land is taken out of production.

The row crop farming side of things is in a disgusting state. The entire production ag farming side of things is propped up by government payments and government subsidized crop insurance. In the 1980s the secretary of ag Earl Butts said farmers needed to “get big or get out”. Nearly 50 years later that is still the government’s motto, and it has meant the death of most small family farms.

It also means that farmers are incentivized to plow up great cattle grazing ground, that is marginal farmland at best, because the government pays them to do so and it makes sure you won’t go broke.

Look at the soybean farmers this year for instance. Soybeans were worth $10/bushel a year ago before trump was elected, they were $10/bushel when they planted them in the spring, and they are $10/bushel now. But because the tariffs and trade wars are making headlines they are whining about prices, and the government is going to bail them out to the tune of $14 billion.

So rather than grow something else or run cattle, they plant the same thing every year and when it goes bad the government steps in to bail them out.

Cattle ranchers have never received support from the government because the price was too low. Even when it was determined that the “big 4 packers” were colluding to
artificially keep the price of cattle low.

There are 4 companies that control 85% of the beef packing industry in the United States, and 2 of them are not even American owned companies, but that’s a story for another time.

Then disease in central America strikes. New World Screw Worm is a parasite that lays its eggs in open wounds of cattle and causes infections. The infestation meant we had to halt all beef imports from Mexico. This again sent the price of cattle soaring. But what
about the price of beef?

In 2015 the average price of a pound of grocery store ground beef was $4.25. In 2025 the average price of grocery store ground beef is $6.50 cents. So that means even with all these factors happening, the price of beef has not skyrocketed, on the contrary it has only kept up with inflation.

Nearly everything else in the grocery store in up 300%-500% in that time yet beef has merely kept up with inflation. Consumer demand for beef is 40-year highs, so the consumer is not saying the price of beef is too high, so why all the uproar about the
price of beef from the president suddenly?

Well, that’s easy to piece together.

The price of beef hasn’t increased substantially; the price of cattle has nearly tripled. The packers simply don’t want to pay that much for the cattle. JBS is one of those Brazilian owned
meatpacking companies. JBS also donated $5 million to the Trump-Vance committee.

Now trump is making comments about importing more foreign beef. Just the comments have sent the cattle markets crashing during the last month… but the price of boxed beef is higher yet!

So it was never about the consumer or the price of beef, it was that the packers did not want to pay what the cattle are worth, and they have the money to get what they want.

The new American way: government intervention. The cattle ranchers have never received the support the grain farmers have for low prices, but when they finally see some decent prices for the first time in their lives the government is going to step in and
ruin it. The rancher is already at the mercy of mother nature, now we are expected to submit to the government as well.

We look back to 1986, when Ronald Reagan said,” The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”’ It seems that certain observation has become increasingly valid over time.

Thoughts? I'd love to hear them in the comments below.

Sincerely,

Your Montana Ranch Family

Darlington Ranch Co.