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Meat Costs Rise, Selling Costs Drop: Meat Packers, Farmers And Consumers Square Off

By News Apr 16, 2020 | 11:14 AM

Meat prices at the grocery store are hitting the pocketbooks and the state’s cattle producers are seeing dangerously low prices at the markets.

The new coroavirus continues to pose issues to those who buy meat and those who raise it.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had anything like this,” Paula Peterson, a farmer and cattle producer in northern Lancaster County, tells KLIN News.

Her and her husband raise over 100 cows each year and the calf crop each spring. What they make from harvesting row crops and selling the calves are their only source of income.

“Where does it make sense to make your cuts?” she says. “We’ve been doing that for the last couple of years, but the timing this year is not great.”

They’re looking at holding back their calves that would normally be sold to see if the market improves, but even then that’s a gamble. Peterson says they have pasture they can put their calves on and feed them corn since its price is doable.

But any notable change in the market would make that a gamble.

And yet, farmers are getting paid a low price at the market and everyone is paying a high price in the checkout line.

Why are we seeing such a drastic separation on this spectrum?

The Nebraska Farm Bureau is asking U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate meatpacking plants for market manipulation.

“These are black swan type of events,” Jordan Dux, national affairs director for the Nebraska Farm Bureau, says. “They’re essentially getting paid a lot on the retail side of things when they shift the price of beef over the dollars aren’t translating to cow-calf producers and actually they’re seeing the inverse of that where the price drastically decreases.”

The goal is to ensure the cattle meatpacking industry is in compliance with the federal antitrust laws targeted to maintaining a competitive marketplace.

In  an April 14 letter, Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson pointed to the alarming disparity between farm-level prices received by farmers and ranchers  for cattle  and whole sale prices  for beef  following  the fire and subsequent closure of a beef processing plant in Kansas and the current COVID-19 outbreak,  where cattle producers  have experienced sharp  declines in market prices  while  large margin increases  occurred  in the meat packing sector.

“The worry is the four companies are not following anti-trust laws, they’re not following the competition that is required in the open-market place. They are colluding essentially with one another to buy down the price of cattle to get a profit for them on the back end,” Dux said.

The Petersen’s are just one example across the country where they face an uncertain future – more than usual – on the daily gambles they must take.

“But farmers are in it for the long haul,” she said.