09/27/2026
100% right! Itās sad the amount of Americans that have forgotten where their food comes from, or just havenāt been taught. Agriculture education is so important!
That $8 pound of hamburger didnāt start at the grocery store.
It started years before you ever picked it up.
It started with a cow standing in a pasture.
A rancher feeding her through winter. Fixing fence in the dark. Paying the vet bill. Buying hay when the rain didnāt come. Paying for minerals, equipment, fuel, taxes, insurance, land, repairs and a hundred other things nobody sees when theyāre standing in front of the meat case.
Then she has a calf.
And we wait.
We feed it. Work it. Vaccinate it. Protect it. Move it from pasture to pasture. Put more fuel in the tractor. Fix another fence. Buy another roll of hay.
And we wait some more.
Because cattle arenāt corn you plant in April and harvest a few months later.
From conception until an animal ultimately becomes beef can represent well over two years of somebodyās time, money and risk.
Thatās the part missing from so many conversations about the price of beef.
People see $7, $8 or $9 hamburger and assume somebody must be getting rich.
I promise you, the rancher isnāt standing at the pasture gate counting grocery-store dollars.
High beef prices do NOT automatically mean high rancher profits.
Our cattle supply is tight. Rebuilding it isnāt as simple as deciding we need more beef and producing more cattle next month.
To rebuild, ranchers have to keep heifers they otherwise could have sold.
That means giving up income today hoping that heifer becomes a productive cow tomorrow.
Then you breed her.
Wait roughly nine months for a calf.
Raise that calf.
And wait again.
All while continuing to pay every bill that comes with keeping those animals alive.
Thatās why I wish people would stop looking at American ranchers like weāre the enemy every time beef gets expensive.
Weāre paying high prices too.
Our families buy groceries.
Our trucks need fuel.
Our electric bills come due.
And everything we use to produce your food has gotten more expensive right along with everything you use to feed your family.
We arenāt asking Americans to blindly accept expensive food.
Families deserve affordable food AND farmers and ranchers deserve to be able to afford to produce it.
Those two things shouldnāt be enemies.
Because eventually we have to ask a much bigger question than:
āWhy does this pound of hamburger cost so much?ā
We need to start asking:
āWhat happens when raising it costs so much that the next generation decides it isnāt worth doing anymore?ā
Because once the cattle are goneā¦
Once the family ranch is soldā¦
Once that pasture becomes something elseā¦
We donāt rebuild American agriculture overnight.
We arenāt just raising cattle out here.
Weāre trying to keep enough of American agriculture alive that our children can still raise them after weāre gone.
And THAT is worth talking about. šŗšøš
America Feeds America.
