America's Last Independent Farmers Are being Priced Out

Friends,

Here's a math problem nobody can solve.

America has its fewest cattle in 75 years. Beef demand is the strongest it's been in decades. And cattle prices just crashed to their lowest point of the year.

That's not supposed to be possible. The math is broken.

Here's what actually happened. On August 13, Tyson announced it was closing two more beef plants, one in Illinois and one in Utah. The Illinois plant processed 3,000 head a day. 2,500 people worked there. They got zero notice. Harvest ended the same day the press release went out. That's nine months after Tyson shuttered its Lexington, Nebraska plant and 3,200 jobs with it.

The next morning, cattle futures hit their lowest prices of 2026.

Supply didn't change. Demand didn't change. One company made one announcement, and every cow in America got repriced.

That's the commodity market: cattle get bought and sold like barrels of oil. One animal basically counts the same as any other, and the rancher doesn't set the price; they take it.

This week I sat with ranchers living inside that broken math. One had been expecting around $2,800 a calf. Now he's looking at closer to $2,200. That's $600 a head, gone in a month. He spent all year raising the healthiest calves he knew how to raise. None of it mattered. The price of his work got set in a boardroom he'll never see the inside of.

Those conversations are gutting. There's no softer word for it.

Here's the part that should stop you cold. This is the best cattle market in a lifetime. Record prices were supposed to rebuild the American herd.

The opposite is happening.

Small processors are getting squeezed out because a calf is now worth more sold as an animal than processed as meat. And the big packers aren't winning either. Tyson expects to lose more than half a billion dollars on beef this year, and closing plants is how they're dealing with it.

So where's the beef coming from? Imports. A record 5.5 billion pounds this year, the third record year in a row.

Fewest American cattle in 75 years. Most imported beef ever. The best market in a lifetime is quietly dismantling the thing it was supposed to reward.

And here's what keeps me up at night. Cattle ranching is the last big piece of American agriculture that's still independent. Hogs and chicken already got swallowed. Most of those farmers don't even own the animals in their barns. Cattle ranchers held out. The commodity system is working on that.

Eliza, Andrea and me pushing cattle out to fresh pasture.

Which brings me to why I'm writing this from Montana.

I moved out here to help take our beef to the next level. My goal for next year is to reach at least 100 head on this ranch, raised outside the commodity system.

I'll be straight with you: I don't know yet if I can pull it off. There are still things I'm figuring out.

But that's what Grass Roots was built for. None of our farmers find out what their animals are worth from a press release. Prices get set with our farmers, not for them. That's not a nicer version of the commodity system. It's the exit.

And none of it is possible without you. The only reason our farmers can leave the commodity system behind is that you're there to buy from them directly.

Thank you for helping us build an exit.

Your farmer,
Cody