The Coming Beef Shortage, as Explained by a Bull.
Do you remember those speed-reading infomercials in the ’90s? The ones where kids and adults alike had their noses inches from the text and apoplectically threw their heads and fingertips side to side across the page?
Well, Liz can do that with a credit card bill. It’s a hell of a talent. So, when the American Express bill arrived in the mail. Liz opened it with her usual ferocity and then leveled a gaze upon me that I can only describe as “Al Qaidan.”
On a small scale, we are experiencing what “Big Livestock” (Conventional cattlemen) are experiencing: getting stuff from far away is expensive. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to get much from afar. Big Livestock, on the other hand, relies on great heaps of stuff from far-off lands. So, now, we are going to have a beef shortage in 2023.
Anybody who loves animals has been in the position of having an animal that is more expensive than their automobile. We bought a new bull this fall. He is undoubtedly more expensive than the car I drive daily. The car isn’t too bad either, but the bull -William Robert Buford Beauregard Gentry III- is a dandy!
We call WRBBG3 “Billy Bob.” As you can tell by the name, he came from down south. So, in retrieving him, I got a taste of the larger cattle industry, and man, it was expensive.
See, Billy Bob reminded me of the high cost of hauling cattle. What brought upon Liz’s Al Qaidanist gaze (Forgive me as I perfect this new word of mine) was our underestimation of the costs. Stuff has been getting more expensive lately? The gas, maintenance, and hotel bill to pick up Billy Bob doubled our monthly operating expenses. We missed the estimation of costs by more than 50%. Billy Bob cost more in gasoline and infrastructure than the rest of our cow herd combined. The big miss was due to inflation. Everything seems double what it used to be, from the gasoline to the blown trailer tire.
You’re probably asking, what in the heck does this have to do with an impending beef shortage? First, you must understand that the conventional livestock industry comprises different groups of specialists.
There are several steps in the beef supply chain:
The cow-calf operator (raises the baby to weaning weight)
The backgrounder (gets the calf ready for a feedlot)
The feedlot (fattens the animal)
The processor (butcher)
The warehouse (warehouses)
Grocery store (Grocerizes… I made that word up too)
The most interesting part about this process is that the different steps can often be hundreds, if not thousands, of miles apart. For most of the cattle raised on our place, the only truck ride they will ever take is to the processor and straight onto the end consumer. Often, the end consumer will pick up the meat at the processor.
Remember the six steps I outlined above? All but one of those steps is done in-house by us. In the rest of the industry, every one of the six steps uses vast amounts of petroleum daily. Of course, there are exceptions to the previous statement, but the exceptions are damned few and far between. In our operation, we strive to keep petroleum and electricity use down to a minimum. Not just because I am a cheapskate and Liz is a Hippy, but cows have a hard time paying for stuff. We want our nine-year-old to be a cattleman, not just us.
For the last couple of generations, cattlemen could effectively trade their commodity (beef) for other commodities (petroleum, electricity, fertilizer) to make a profit. However, this profit has been captured by the more efficient use of outside commodities through economies of scale in the cattle business.
Up until about 1970, a successful cattleman probably had a truck something like this one:
A truck of that size (and speed) kept the cattle business local, or at least regional. Economies of scale were greatly limited by the scale of a rancher’s ability to transport livestock. To move a herd of cattle was usually an event that included whole ranching communities.
Now, a prosperous rancher will have a truck like this:
The transformation from Rancher to Trucker looks something like this:
1920’s: No trucking + some cows = a profit
1940’s: truck + some more cows = more cows and more market access.
1980’s: Countrywide livestock transportation infrastructure + way, way more cows = reliance on foreign markets to make a profit.
The 2000s: reliance on global petroleum infrastructure to maintain a petroleum-based production model.
2001: Alquaedian disruption. (There! I got my word right!)
2020’s: reshuffling of global petroleum infrastructure.
And today, you hear me gripe about a couple of gasoline tanks in a 10-year-old pickup. The griping is minimized due to grass not requiring outside stuff to grow. And we will sell more beef in 2023 than in 2022. But there is real pain across rural America, and there will be pain in the meat department next year. I feel sorry for the young family that wants to feed their kids a hamburger. But I hope they can get to know a local farmer who doesn’t rely on stuff from beyond the horizon.
I think that’s the only way we will keep ourselves fed in the future.
It is through the community; it will be with each other.
