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R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard speaks about President Donald Trump’s new farm aid announcement, what it means for the industry and the growing gap between beef and cattle prices on “Make Money.”
It will be some time before consumers see any relief when it comes to price of beef.
Prices have peaked and are expected to fall, but there isn’t much pressure pushing them lower at the moment, Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, told FOX Business.
The United States is expected to have slightly more livestock in 2026, but buyers are still looking to international suppliers to meet their needs, Swanson said. If buyers continue to import, it means domestic supply is still tight and prices are likely to remain high.
“It’s going to be a slow, painful process for the consumer,” Swanson told FOX Business, explaining the complex market forces that must change for prices to come down.
The cost of beef has been a particular issue for consumers for years, with retail beef prices hitting record highs in 2024 thanks to a combination of deteriorating grazing conditions, inflation and shrinking livestock inventories, according to the Farm Bureau.
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Beef prices rose sharply in September, outpacing the entire food category according to the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index. The price of food products increased by 3.1% year-on-year, while the prices of beef and veal rose by 14.7%.
A ranch hand rounds up cattle in St. Lucie County, Florida. (Ty Wright/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Problems persist in the industry, according to Farm Bureau economist Bernt Nelson, who wrote in a blog post last week that the Department of Agriculture’s “Cattle on Feed” report highlights the current tightening of feeder cattle supplies.
There were 11.7 million cattle fed in the United States as of November 1, down about 2% from 2024 and the lowest number of cattle fed for the month of November since 2018. The report also estimates that 2.04 million head of cattle were placed in feedlots, down about 10% from last year and marking the lowest number of cattle fed for the month of October in the history of the report.
The smaller number of cattle fed, that is, beef sold in stores, reflects a smaller supply of feeder cattle.
Beef cattle in corrals on a ranch in Sonoita, Arizona, November 11, 2025. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Several players in the beef supply chain – cattle producers, meat packers and wholesalers, and retailers – also want to protect their margins. Since no one in that supply chain wants to accept lower profits, it becomes more difficult to reduce costs for consumers, Swanson told FOX Business.
This competition will eventually drive down beef prices.
“The players in this operation don’t want to give up what they currently have. So there will be competition that will drive prices down,” he said, adding that “it’s never a straight line.”
Signs of this change are already appearing. Swanson said the industry was likely at a turning point following Tyson’s announcement last month that it would close permanently a large beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, by January 2026 and that it was reducing operations at its Texas beef processing plant to a single shift.
Packages of meat are seen at a supermarket in Houston, Texas. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)
Immediately following his announcement, live cattle prices fell sharply. Although prices have rebounded slightly, they remain below recent highs, according to Swanson.
This decision “immediately sent a strong signal to the market that they are going to bid a little less aggressively on live cattle,” according to Swanson.
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He said meat processors can’t continue to lose money and that “Tyson just proved they’re willing to do something tough about this.”
He believes livestock prices will start to decline, and that a 10% drop, as was the case in 2014, is not “out of the ordinary” compared to what could happen over the next year and a half.
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“If the price of cattle goes down and the wholesale price of beef goes down, yes, the retail price of beef will go down,” he said. “But when is it going to happen? Not immediately. So the consumer is going to be frustrated and not see immediate relief.”
