The meat has never been more expensive, due to supply shortages, but there's a big squeeze on profits.

With US beef prices soaring to record highs, you might think that South Dakota cattle rancher Eric Gropper would be celebrating.

Yet while the cost of the meat in US supermarkets is now 12% higher than it was a year ago, a rise more than three times the rate of general inflation, Gropper says that he and all the other beef farmers aren’t making any more profit than usual.

  • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
    131·
    2 days ago

    No, it means the monopoly exists at the meat processing step. Owning all the land for cattle raising was expensive, so investors targeted the processing step instead, fucking over both the ranchers and the consumers.

    • WesternInfidels@feddit.onlineEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      …you might expect that those four [meat processing] firms are currently making huge profits from high beef prices. Yet the opposite is happening. Tyson, the biggest of the four, reported in May that it had lost more than $500m on beef in the first half of its financial year. Again, it might be selling its beef for record highs, but it is also buying the cattle at all-time peaks.