Turning the Challenge of a Cattle Cycle Into an Opportunity

By Carol Keiser Long:  Belleair, Florida USA

“Cattle crisis” has a nice alliterative ring to it—and that may be why we’ve heard the phrase lately. It’s irresistible to headline authors and television personalities.

Just because they like to write it and say it doesn’t make it so.

We're not in the middle of a cattle crisis.

It’s true that prices are high, supplies are low, and a drought has played a part.

But it’s no crisis. It’s not even close to a crisis.

Instead, we’re in a predictable period of a well-established cycle. Across my 50-plus years in the beef cattle business, starting with 4-H and continuing through my ranching years, I’ve seen the cycle come and go many times. Consumer prices swing back and forth. They always will.

Today, they’re high. The reasons for this are neither complicated nor mysterious.

It starts out with strong demand. Americans love steaks and burgers. They savor the high-quality beef that our ranchers produce—and they’re willing to pay a premium for it.

Here’s what happens. As prices go up, more ranchers decide to take advantage—and they send more heifers into production rather than holding them back. This results in fewer calves, which leads to a smaller supply. Last year, according to CattleFax, beef production was down 4.3 percent. In 2024, CattleFax forecasts a decline of 3.8 percent.

Now it becomes a simple matter of supply and demand, which is why the price of beef rose by 5 percent in 2023. It projects to go up by 4 percent this year.

The solution is patience. Remember, this is a cycle. Ranchers once again will start to hold back heifers and rebuild their herds. This doesn’t happen overnight. Raising a calf into a cow can take two years. Gestation requires an additional nine months. That means a female calf born tonight won’t produce a new calf for nearly three years.

Soon, it will make more economic sense to keep the cow. With proper care—good feed, proper shelter, and attention to health—a cow can produce a calf per year for ten years.

As the cycle moves along, consumers will enjoy better prices relative to their other expenses. This year and next year, however, are likely to be times of adjustment.

This isn’t a crisis. This is how the world works.

Yet there is a potential crisis looming for the beef cattle industry. The problem is that not enough young people are taking up the profession. This threatens the future of meat production.

Who in the next generation will work on the family farms and ranches that are the backbone of our industry?

They won’t come from my progeny. My three kids went into other careers. My seven grandchildren are also taking different paths.

There’s nothing wrong with any of their individual decisions, but they highlight a challenge.

If nobody takes up these family businesses, ranches will get sold. Sometimes they will go to other ranchers who are seeking to expand, and that can be a positive development from the standpoint of the industry.

Increasingly, however, pastures are selling as real estate—and they’re turning into subdivisions and office complexes. I’m currently living in a retirement community that once was ranchland.

This is the kind of trend that could disrupt a familiar business cycle and its routine fluctuations between high and low prices—and keep forcing prices ever upward, creating an authentic “cattle crisis.”

The solution is to find ways to make beef cattle production an attractive choice for young people. It starts with schools: Public investments in agricultural education, including the scholarships that can shape lives. People respond to incentives.

Separately, we must resist pressures to over-regulate our ranches. The life of a rancher is a life of independence, and it always will attract a certain breed of person—someone who loves spending time outdoors caring for livestock in rural America, rather than sitting behind a desk doing paperwork.

Right now, the United States still has the world’s best beef cattle as well as its best ranchers. We can choose to keep it this way. This is an opportunity, not a crisis.

Carol Keiser Long owns C-Bar Cattle Company, which has operated cattle feeding operations in Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois. She volunteers as a board member for the Global Farmer Network.