08/28/2026
10000000%!!!!
I’m a conservative. I believe in American agriculture, free enterprise, less government interference and putting American producers FIRST. And because of that, I’m not going to sit here and pretend every idea coming from a Republican administration is automatically a good one.
Mr. President, on this one, cattlemen deserve better!
You’re talking about the RIGHT problem — packer concentration and the lack of competition in the beef industry. But telling cattle producers we should be able to process our own beef as an answer to that problem is absolutely absurd.
Let me get this straight… We raise the cattle... We own and maintain the land... We buy the genetics... We breed the cows, calve them, vaccinate them, feed them and doctor them... We put up the hay... We build the fences... We maintain the equipment... We pay the feed bill, fuel bill, fertilizer bill, vet bill, insurance bill and payroll... We carry the financial risk from the day that calf hits the ground until the day those cattle leave our possession... We fight droughts, floods, hurricanes, disease, parasites and markets we have absolutely no control over...
And now we're supposed to build the packing plant too???
Come on!!!
Commercial beef processing requires MILLIONS of dollars in infrastructure, skilled labor, inspection, sanitation systems, wastewater management, refrigeration, fabrication equipment, packaging, cold storage, transportation and distribution. Then you've got to find somebody to buy every piece of that animal.
We aren't talking about processing one steer for the family freezer. We're talking about an industry that moves millions of cattle. For a small producer wanting to sell freezer beef directly to consumers, absolutely — CUT THE RED TAPE. Make that easier! Give independent producers more freedom to market their own beef.
I'm 100% behind that, but that is NOT a serious answer to packer concentration in the United States.
Want to help us? Then let's actually take on the problem.
✅Create an environment where independent packing plants can survive.
✅Help regional processors expand.
✅Encourage producer-owned packing facilities.
✅Break down the barriers preventing new packers from entering the market.
✅Enforce antitrust laws.
✅Improve price discovery.
And give us something the cattle industry desperately needs:
MORE BUYERS COMPETING FOR OUR CATTLE. Because here's the part Washington apparently keeps missing. We don't need every cattleman to become a meatpacker. We need more meatpackers competing to buy cattle from cattlemen.
And I'm going to say something else that might make some people uncomfortable.
Being conservative does NOT mean blindly applauding every decision made by a Republican president! I can support President Trump and still tell him when I believe his administration is getting something wrong.
Actually, I believe we SHOULD. Because my loyalty isn't to a politician. My loyalty is to American agriculture, American cattle producers, rural communities and the future we're trying to leave the next generation.
And lately, cattle producers have every right to be asking some hard questions. We're talking about bringing more foreign beef into this country in the name of lowering grocery-store prices. We're talking about policies that could put downward pressure on the very cattle market American producers depend on. And now we're being told that maybe the solution to packer concentration is letting us process the cattle ourselves.
At some point somebody has to ask: WHEN DO WE START PROTECTING THE PEOPLE ACTUALLY RAISING THE BEEF?
American cattlemen have survived drought. We've survived hurricanes. We've survived skyrocketing input costs. We've survived market crashes. We've survived consolidation. We've survived government decisions made by people who have probably never stood in a working pen in August or wondered whether there would be enough grass to make it through another dry year.
We are resilient! But resilience shouldn't be an excuse to keep asking producers to carry more of the burden.
We finally have cattle prices that can encourage producers to reinvest in their operations and begin rebuilding a historically tight cow herd.
DON'T SCREW IT UP. Don't weaken the American cattle producer to make beef temporarily cheaper. Don't confuse direct-to-consumer processing with fixing national packer concentration. And don't tell the people already doing the work that the solution is simply for us to do MORE of it.
We're doing our job. We're raising the damn beef. Now give us a competitive marketplace to sell it in.
Put AMERICAN cattle producers first! Not foreign beef. Not four giant packers. THE CATTLEMEN!
You wanted America First? Then let's put the American cattleman first, too!
