Americans Don't Know Why Beef Prices are High

By Jennifer Hill

Despite all of our industry’s attempts to tell our story, despite the massive money thrown into Beef Checkoff and the overall move to involve our consumers and connect them to the land and product, ranchers still aren’t getting an effective message through about what’s happening in our industry, as evidenced by the new Consumer Foods Insight Report.

The survey-based report developed by Purdue professors aims to give more accurate, real time consumer trend data to producers. Results of the first survey came out earlier this month.

The survey contains an "Ad Hoc" question that changes based on current events. The January question was "Why are retail meat prices rising?"  51% of respondents blamed COVID-related shutdowns for skyrocketing meat prices, while less than 10% recognized packer concentration as the issue.

 So, what does this mean for producers? It means we are spending too much time yelling into the wind and screaming at each other rather than reaching out to our consumer base. Whether you ascribe to 50/14, a compromise bill, MCOOL or VCOOL, R-CALF, NCBA or neither doesn’t matter if we are failing to communicate with the people who buy our product.

 For now, we are probably lucky that consumers are blaming COVID instead of us, assuming ranchers are all sitting around like Boss Hogg, dripping in cash. But how long will their tolerance of “COVID related supply chain trouble” last? Given that the political establishment has seen the writing on the wall and dramatically shifted away from masking and passport mandates, I’m guessing not much longer, so we’d better start explaining it to them. We need to tell them that packing plants are corrupt, government backed monopolies that are bleeding the consumers and the ranchers because we are going to need their support to fix the problem.

No matter the path that you believe producers need to take to solve market disparity you are going to need consumer support. Legislative fixes such 50/14, MCOOL or Checkoff reform literally require an act of Congress. Getting anything done in Congress requires pressure from the people, but ag producers are a very small minority of the population and easily ignored. If you want Congress to act you are going to need consumers to apply pressure alongside you.

Those of us working to find solutions outside of the system such as direct to consumer sales or support for the independent plants popping up around cattle country also need support from consumers. Packing plants aren’t exactly at the top of the list of community development planners. They are expensive and don’t always have great reputations. Getting a new packing plant built requires the support of an entire community that can see the benefits through the, often untrue, claims of smell or increased crime.

We need consumers to see the truth behind high meat prices in order to connect them to the solutions because without them it’s unlikely we’ll get very far.