Dear editor:
I beg to differ (a little) with Dennis Sun’s op/ed regarding consumer pricing of meat commodities to the end user (consumer).
Having grown up with a large family of large-scale private pork, beef, corn and soybean producers in Iowa and 35 years of my own successful cow/calf (occasional finished steer producer to friends and family) production, I have seen dramatic swings in pricing since the late 1950’s.
I remember when a barrel of oil was equal to a bushel of wheat and everyone sat tight around the dinner (lunch) table as the 12 o’clock market report came over the radio.
We hung onto every word from Orion Samuelson or the noon time Chicago market reports.
Regardless if you’re a feed or meat producer, a lifelong member of the relevant marketing associations, or consumer, the US government has used commodities as a negotiating tool to sway global trade policies for decades.
Producers no longer (if we truly ever did) have access to direct foreign markets.
Lamb from Oz and NZ is processed (or used to be) in offshore, purpose-built vessels that imported the finished product to US markers that cut theirs-based lamb processing facilities out of the Oz/NZ overhead equation.
The feds recently bought up huge quantities of alfalfa for feeding feral horses under BLM control resulting in higher hay prices for producers that run short due of their own production due to drought or restrictions in irrigation water.
Dairy prices have been a mess since I can remember.
For the first in recent memory, cattle producers are finally breaking even or able to turn a profit when 9-cwt steers are going for +/-$3000/ea.
Meat producers gripe about corn/hay prices, feedlots complain about costs for feeder steers, feedlots complain about high prices for steers & low prices the Big 4 packets pay for their slaughter/ready critters, every farm/ranch and business owner gripes about higher labor costs during/post Covid, fuel costs, fertilizer/herbicide costs out of sight, national inflation, global value of the US dollar, trade agreements, tariffs, etc., etc., etc.
It’s a highly complex and convoluted cobweb of inputs that has ground beef prices forecasted to hit $10/lbs and pork and lamb products prices forecasted to go higher in 2026.
Are consumers shopping with their pocket books? Hell yes we are!
Do we prefer made in America - yep, every time outta the chute!
Is meat pricing to the consumer right where it needs to be? Maybe yes, maybe no. But it is certainly not as easy and simplistic as Mr. Sun makes it out to be.
Depending where you get your market reports and which commodities expert(s) you trust for the futures game, it's going to be a 98-point ride for the near future.
I try to be as optimistic as I can until proven wrong.
As the late Rodney Dangerfield always said, "It was rough. I’m telling you it was rough, but I’m better now.
Remember: the world will keep spinning around the sun and this too, shall come to pass.
Sincerely,
Scott Perkins, Cheyenne
