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.
**Middlemen! (Fat cats) ** Ensuring that the producers work flat out to break even and that consumers are working flat out to pay for produce. Ultra-capitalism working as intended.
This is one of those points that’s been really bothering me lately. Seriously, pick an industry, and then think about who actually does the work. Farmers, Teachers, Nurses, Construction workers, Musicians, Machinists… The folks doing the work are poorer than they’ve ever been, and yet somehow those services cost more than ever. Where is the money going?
Various businesses have been bought up at varying rates since the 80s. It’s basically monopolization but vertically. Private equity squeezes money out.
Yachts. So many yachts.
Also bribes, I mean PACs and lobbying campaigns.
Idc, whatever bad things happen to them is deserved since they voted for it.
Farmers don’t aim for profit on paper… the way the tax code works for farms is they have to be “profitable” but “$1 is profit”. The way to judge farmer success, look at all the “expenses” they’ve “acquired for the farm”. Check our what year and trim package their truck is, or when they last got a new large purchase like land or an additional herd or new tractor/implement and you’ll figure out that most of them aren’t hurting too bad and are loving the cost of beef.
Granted, this is all anecdotal evidence from growing up with and around beef farmers and still keeping an ear on the business. Your mileage may vary.
This ain’t the case in UK, you get taxed on your lands worth, including machinary, life stock and the house itself.
No you don’t. That’s a deliberate misreading of a (proposed. Is it in place yet?) inheritance tax change as being an ongoing tax. It is not.
Don’t believe everything Jeremy Clarkson says, he literally bought tgat farm to dodge inheritance tax and is on record saying so.
You should believe very little of what Clarkson says, he’s a professional buffoon.
Not surprising somewhere has a more intelligent tax code than the US lol
Not with that huge sponge absorbing all those profits. The middle men AKA the capitalist are not going to let anyone else make a profit.
The capitalist and the farmer are the same person tbh. Most US food supply is corporate farms now, not small time farmers.
There are a great many small time farmers. They are not capitalist. They get by month to month like the rest of us.
Farmers are generally very wealthy people. That is the inevitable result of a century of farm consolidations. Most farmers are not true farmers in the traditional sense. They operate large “family farms” that are just family-owned businesses in the same was Johnson and Johnson is a family business. The large number of migrant workers and farm hands they hire do the real work. But the actual guy who owns the land, whose family has had the land for five generations? That is literally just landed gentry.
Some of them I guess. One of farmers south of here who does own six hundred acres was involved in a serious accident on the farm when he was in his 70’s Two weeks later he is back out there over the objections of his whole family working harder then you can get the average twenty something to work these days. Personally I disliked him but you couldn’t call him lazy or uninvolved. My experience doesn’t match your description. It may be different elsewhere but I don’t see it your way.
Sorry, was mistaken, only 5% of farmland is corporations. The average farm size is still fucking massive though. Over 440 hectares/1100 acres. That’s a LOT of land and essentially it’s still capitalism, the capital being the land and machinery. Like around 4 million dollars worth of land on average per farm. That means the bigger family farms are likely sitting on tens of millions worth of land.
There are also around 400k documented seasonal immigrant workers helping those farmers every year, as well as who knows how many undocumented ones that nobody pays taxes on. So I have my suspicions that most of the family farms aren’t mostly worked by said families.
But they Voted for REPUBLICANS! HOW is this POSSIBLE that REPUBLICANS would make them POOR!
The details the article covers are interesting, but not one mention of what is causing record droughts and how the industrial cattle industry contributed to the climate crisis. The end of the article made it seem like a return to normal for the cattle industry is inevitable, but it really is not a sustainable feature of our culture.
I buy beef like once a year, if that. Its too expensive, horrible for the environment, and honestly, after so much time without it, I dont ever crave it.
This is good news to me. Reduce the market. I made a roast veg dish last night for supper using lentils and einkorn (a grain). My husband refuses the fake meat products, but has no problem with lentils, beans, and the uncommon grains I use.
That’s the problem with the politics of the USA One group wants higher prices of meat, and gas. Laws about safe working conditions. Environmental laws about dumping chemicals.
Second group wants lower prices on everything, wants bigger trucks, bigger houses, overseas vacations 4x year, eat more meat.
Though they both complain, they’re complaining about two incompatible things.If you polled most Democratic voters, just how many would endorse higher beef prices? Except for a handful of vegans and very left environmentalist folks, very few would say yes.
Does meat contribute to climate change? Yes. But it’s a rounding error compared to the burning of fossil fuels for heat, transportation, and electricity. Raising the price of meat is the absolute lowest priority when it comes to fighting climate change. There are far more effective ways to spend finite political capital than going after people’s dinner plates. Democrats don’t even support jacking up gas taxes for environmental reasons. The approach has always been to subsidize green energy rather than tax fossil energy. The carrot rather than the stick.
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Livestock accounts for about 20% of greenhouse gasses and 65% of agricultural land is used to grow feed for animals.
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It can’t always be the carrot … sometimes it needs to be the stick.
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absoFuckinglutely
Similar. Maybe a bit more than once a year, but not much. I’d say 70% of my meals are vegetarian, 5 vegan, and the rest mostly chicken. Beans are the magical fruit.
I never got the hang of lentils though, maybe I should revisit them.
I cherish the bean, and our diet is similar. My husband cooks lentils at his job all the time, so I thought Id try them. They cook really fast for a bean.
He said they do lentil tacos at work all the time. Im going to be trying them soon
I have seen cases of climate experts saying instead pushing large scale veganism a more realistic idea is just eating A LOT less beef. Outside of a random cheese burger I dont eat much myself. Don’t want to end up constipated like Hank anyway
yeah exactly.
I am not vegan. Not even close. I used homemade chicken stock to cook those lentils and grains last night. But incorperating more plant based foods into ones diet isnt a bad idea. The bean is so powerful.
Is that because of the cultural kneejerk reaction to veganism? Kind of how people agree with the concepts of socialism and communism until you use those words in front of them?
The difference is that most Americans are literally biologically evolved to consume animal products. (Lactose tolerance.)
It’s a lot easier to cut back on beef and other animal products than to eliminate them completely. It’s a lot easier to eat vegetarian or vegan options when available instead of feeling the need to read labels and refuse to eat food at friends, family and other gatherings entirely.
Probably. It’s the whole: let people enjoy things. But their enjoyment is pretty fucking sick.
Not sure. Personally I don’t subscribe to veganism because I believe what we considering suffering is usually based on the concept of beings born with a spine/central nervous system. If youre born a vertebrae only you are worthy of not experiencing “pain”. To me it seems as arbitrary as not killing a being because its considered cute
I’m vegan because of what causing in others what I perceive to be suffering in turn does to me.
Maybe I’m not understanding your point about veganism or maybe your understanding of veganism is incorrect.
Also, it seems to me that all living beings, including insects, do not want to be harmed or die. Ever try squishing an ant and have it run every which way to avoid your thumb, or swat a fly that just won’t be swatted? Egg-laying hens are tortured in the commercial egg factories. The dairy industry (probably as cruel as the egg industry, honestly) is why we have veal, which seems super cruel. I don’t like being involved with it at all.
I’d like to be vegan, and I’m trying to work my way toward it.
I look at plants biological/chemical response to tissue damage as no different to our neurological response to it. Fundamentally all organisms avoid tissue damage to pass on their genetics to the next generation. Thats a fundamental aspect of all life. The only reason we look at plant/fungi pain differently is because we dont respond to tissue damage the same way as they do. Personally i dont see plants moving energy to areas of tissue damage or releasing chemicals as a distress response any different than vertebraes own responses to tissue damage through what we consider “pain”. Its all based on a level of similarity we give certain organism to oursleves.
Here’s my example. if a society that is a type 5 civilization on Kardashev’s scale started to eat humans it would be along the same scale as us eating plants. Not eating beings with a gap so huge in intelligence isnt any different than not eating dogs because we find them cute. Its all arbitrary with no real logic. Limiting suffering based on intelligence or a nervous system is as arbitrary as limiting it based on cuteness or brain size. We just choose to give certain organisms more empathy because we consider them closer to ourselves but isnt that selfish? Youre only worthy if we consider you close to humanity
Edit: that being said id be more than happy to hear your thoughts on the flaws of my argument
There might be a relevant difference in the fact that most animals can run/move away from something that hurt them, and pain might be the necessary evolutionary adaptation to facilitate that. A plant or fungus just has chemical responses, which probably don’t rely on being sentient. Our skin most likely produces melanin without being sentient, after all.
I guess the interesting question is whether there are any processes in plants that somehow imply sentience. Afaik science hasn’t found a decisive example yet.
I’d say it’s wrong to harm other humans because it’s extremely likely that they feel pain and emotions in a similar way as I do. Roughly the same applies to chimps, and dogs, and pigs too. Maybe the emotions aren’t as complex, but they clearly behave according to the basic ones like joy and fear. The response to pain is basically the same as ours. So harming them without a necessity to do so seems cruel to me.
Even if plants were more conscious than animals, the animals have to be fed with tons of plants to begin with. Eating plants directly minimizes plant and animal deaths.
From my experience, most people assign deeper meaning and claims of consciousness simply because they do not have a grasp of molecular biology. Or if they do, it’s rudimentary. Not as an insult against them, just as a matter of fact.
Cells are 100% molecular machines. It’s why viruses works. The virus doesn’t actually hurt the cell, it just changes it’s programming so it makes viruses instead.
If you worked in a kitchen, and a new order came in that said “Chop off all your fingers, then disembowel yourself.” You wouldn’t do it. A cell would. So would an ant. So would a plant.
It literally dawned on my dumb ass that you were talking about plants like a half hour later. It’s one of the reasons why I think trees might be the highest form of existence before nirvana. They don’t have to inflict harm or pain to survive (they live off the rain, sun and soil).
My only response to the difference between eating something like, say, lettuce is that I can cut it down to eat off it and it grows back, where I can’t cut down a beef to the hooves and have a cow grow back. But yeah, I have to eat to survive, so vegan at least would free me of doing some of the harm I must cause in the world.
Are there any Buddhist monks out there that can weigh in with an official position on all of this to help a new practitioner (me) out?
But muscle grows back depending on how much energy it consumes. The only difference is we’re fully aware that that happens. If we cut down a tree to its roots its no different to eating a cow to its hooves. Plants are aware because they also need to consume organic matter to live and evolve to do so. If you burry a human corpse under a tree they leech the nutrients that make up the human body to grow stronger and pass on its genes. Parasitic or symbiotic plants and fungi consume live organisms to survive. Is that not an indication of a willingness to survive and therefore a form of consciousness?
The dairy industry (probably as cruel as the egg industry, honestly) is why we have veal,
hardly any calves end up as veal at all.
all living beings, including insects, do not want to be harmed or die.
this is some wishy-washy phrasing. henry the eighth didn’t want an iphone.
Egg-laying hens are tortured in the commercial egg factories.
no, they’re not
Depends on what you consider torture, the fact that most large scale chicken farms have to use antibiotics premtivly because the livestock would get sick from the conditionss they live in is a good giveaway. Also the amount of space per animal is so abysmal that calling that torture isnt wrong.
Yeah I can’t even say we eat it once a year now. More like circumstance. we don’t eat out but im surprised burger places are not pushing chicken.
They are, there’s “huge deals” on chicken burgers, chicken strips, chicken wraps, fried chicken, chicken tenders, “chicken fries”, chicken sandwiches, McChicken, chicken tacos, chicken burritos, and every other version of “chicken” there is - and a lot of offerings where the meat is nondescript have dropped the meat type in the description in favor of just “mini tacos”, “classic tacos”, “meat and bean burrito”, “chili”, etc, at least as far as I’ve seen. The biggest pushers seem to be Taco Bell, Carl Jr, and Jack in the Box.
yeah since I don’t really go anymore I likely don’t see them. just mcdonalds commercials.
But you could end up in a gallery showing in Dallas!
I try to eat beef way less these days, I should only eat beef once or twice a month
I realization I had many years ago, was noting our ancestors even just 100 years ago, did not consume meat at every meal. It wasnt possible. Just because one can, doesnt mean one should. It’s not been common to have meat at every single meal until the last 50-70 years or so. Your great great gran pappy in WW1 wasnt shoving mcdonalds hamburgers down his throat multiple times a month. He was eating what was available with the seasons.
I fact checked myself and it says british soliders were provided with 6oz of meat a day. so, bad example. but, like on the regular, it wasnt the norm. especially if you look at other cultures.
You’re going to flip when you find out that some people eat 10 x 6oz of meat a day.
I fact checked myself and it says british soliders were provided with 6oz of meat a day
Maybe, but surely not all beef.
Yes. Eating a variety of meat - goat, lamb, pork, chicken, horse, buffalo, etc can be hugely beneficial.
true. The article I found mentioned tinned fish and pork
Tinned fish …ugh … OTOH people eat sardines. I guess. Somewhere. I suppose those WW1 soldiers didn’t have access to Spam yet. Spam is gross but I would eat that before I’d eat dead fish in a can.
tuna is really popular in a can, I dont eat any fish, but yeah, dont think war time rations are exactly gormet
Despite the dilemma of drought and disease, no one is also mentioning how a lot of our materials that are being used to take care of the cattle are imported from another country. The vehicles, fencing posts, barbed wire, possibly medicine, parts for the vehicles, etc. Part of it costing more from buying materials to take care of the cattle, nothing is barely made in house and if it is, its once again coming from somewhere else to take care of what little product they have.
Somebody is a damned liar. I know a few different small cattle ranchers (like 10 to 30 cows). They are absolutely making more.
I’m definitely making more. Not sure if it makes up for the past low markets, but it’s doing a lot for me right now.
arnt we mostly importing beef anyways.
afaik it’s because the cattle demand more money now for selling their bodies.
How selfish of them, they apparently don’t care about DOW at all
I hear they are unionizing.
That’s a whole lot of words to describe what we knew as fact hundreds of years ago: tariffs are always inflationary.
In other words, in spite of a worrying amount of consolidation, the beef market is (for now) still a functioning, competitive market, and the players within it do not have the power to unilaterally increase their margins. Huh.
I wouldn’t tell you that Impossible Foods’ “Ground Beef From Plants” is exactly like real ground beef. But it’s pretty good. Unfortunately it’s not cheap, either.
Costco often sells Impossible Burger patties for a pretty decent price. Way better than grocery store prices.
Sucks when they stop selling it tho, so we tend to stock up on the things, usually have two 10 packs in the chest freezer
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.
…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.
For ground meat, I’ve been going with pork, chicken, and turkey. You don’t even have to drain them after browning usually (more so the poultry, though I’ve found ground pork is much leaner than beef, too). Price-wise they’ve all been creeping up and pork isn’t that far behind beef (even saw a few times where the pork was the same price as the beef) but chicken/turkey are usually a few bucks cheaper per package.
My wife and I cut way back on red meat a few years ago, on doctors’ recommendations. So yeah, we use a lot of ground turkey and chicken.
I wouldn’t tell you that Impossible Foods’ “Ground Beef From Plants” is exactly like real ground beef. But it’s pretty good. Unfortunately it’s not cheap, either.
This is all that I buy when I want something ground-beef-like for cooking. It’s not cheap (not super-expensive either) but it’s highly uniform and the taste and texture are fine with me. There used to be one or two other brands of plant-based “beef” at Winco but now there’s only “Impossible” so I’m curious about what’s going on in the artificial meat part of the market.
It’s time to trust bust the meat processors to oblivion
It’s the beef processor’s fault
