Ranchers say 2c per pound of beef at retail could save independents, boost cattle country towns

Many have wondered what it will take to reverse the decline of small, independent livestock producers, but according to some advocates the answer to that question is just two cents more per pound for meat at retail. "Adding two cents on every pound in the meat counter would keep ranchers from losing money and turn slaughterhouse jobs from work into a living," Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder reports. "Two cents a pound at the grocery would fundamentally change the economies of thousands of rural communities."

Bill Bullard of R-CALF, a ranchers' organization, explained during last week’s meeting of the Organization for Competitive Markets in Omaha the share of each food dollar that goes to ranchers has dropped from 63 cents in 1980 to 43 cents in 2009. As cattle raising has become less profitable, more and more ranchers have left the business, Bishop reports. Bullard said the U.S. has been losing 1,000 ranchers a month since 1980. The answer to turning around the industry according to advocates would be just one cent per pound of meat at retail, Bishop writes, adding "One cent would change a money-losing business into one that breaks even." (R-CALF chart; click for larger image)

The second penny in the formula would go to workers at meatpacking plants. Despite rising food prices, Lauritsen told Bishop, meatpacking plants are under pressure to cut hourly wages. If one cent per pound of retail beef went directly to workers' wages, Lauritsen said average wages could go from $13 per hour to $16. "I will tell you, brothers and sisters, that that would make a dramatic change in a person's lifestyle," he told the convention. "It would change the main street Cherokee, Iowa. It's life changing money and it's only a penny."

Mark Lauritsen, international vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 36 percent of U.S. meatpacking workers, told Bishop that as more ranches fail, less meat is sent to slaughterhouses. "We’re joined at the hip," Lauritsen toled the OCM crowd, which was largely older ranchers and farmers. Since 1960 the meatpacking industry has become more concentrated, with the largest 12.1 percent of feedlots finishing more than 16,000 cattle and marketed nearly three-quarters of beef cattle in 2008, Bishop writes. (Read more)