Where's The Beef?

The real reason for soaring prices.

Photo by Anand Thakur on Unsplash

You might’ve heard...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently went on the news to blame high beef prices on immigrants. It’s nearing $10 a pound. According to a piece in Fortune, it could go up another 60 percent by the end of next year.

What Bessent said:

“Because of the mass immigration, a disease that we’d been rid of in North America made its way up from South America, as these migrants brought some of their cattle with them.”

Apparently, he was referring to a parasite called screwworm. It’s been making a comeback in Mexico, and the U.S. had to suspend live cattle imports as a result. And while the media is blasting Bessent for the weird way he brought it up, they’re not really addressing the root cause. Why? Because it’s not something that can be solved in a few weeks, or even a few months. It’s a problem tied to the destruction of the planet.

And the solution won’t go over well with the portion of the country that has inexplicably made beef a cornerstone of its diet. In fact, when I found out who’s eating most of the beef in this country, I was stunned. That doesn’t happen often.

Get ready for some hard truths.

First, screwworm is definitely causing a major problem for the global beef industry. Although the USDA worked with other countries to nearly eradicate them decades ago, the parasite has been striking back hard. It’s no small thing, either. Screwworm outbreaks can cause billions of dollars in damage to farmers, and it’s an incredibly painful way for cattle to die. Researchers think warmer weather and stronger storms are pushing them back up from Cuba and South America. One study found that warming temperatures will make new outbreaks even bigger and more frequent.

So, screwworm has nothing to do with immigration. It has everything to do with Trump’s own terrible climate policies, and all the presidents and fossil fuel CEOs before him who poisoned the planet while ignoring the consequences. In some ways, the beef industry itself is responsible for its own destruction.

Also, the western part of the U.S. has entered an historic megadrought, the worst in more than 1,000 years. Cows aren’t native to the region. They were brought over by European settlers. They truly don’t belong here.

Cows consume enormous amounts of resources compared to other things we could be eating. To make matters worse, farmers and corporate agriculture giants alike have been overpumping aquifers for decades. All of this is finally starting to converge into an absolute disaster for cattle ranchers. Trump’s 75 percent tariffs on Brazilian beef aren’t helping. Until recently, they were selling us 197 million pounds of beef a year. Just five years ago, they were selling us 7 million.

According to NPR, this year’s U.S. cattle herd marks the smallest in 75 years. Parasites might contribute to the crisis, but it’s not the main problem. It’s drought. It’s overproduction. It’s overconsumption.

This problem goes back years. A 2024 article in the Missouri Independent directly addresses severe droughts contributing to steep drops in cattle herds, bringing the nation’s top beef producers to record lows.

You know, a few years ago, I remember getting trolled and ridiculed for talking about flash droughts and heatwaves killing off cows in the U.S. Some of us said this was going to become a major problem.

We were told to be quiet.

Now, here we are.

It requires 1,850 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.

Compare that to other foods:

• Pork = 720 gallons of water

• Chicken = 520 gallons of water

• Soybeans = 256 gallons of water

• Wheat = 220 gallons of water

• Corn = 148 gallons of water

Some pro-cattle researchers counter that cattle use closer to 1,675 gallons of water, and most of it comes from “green water,” meaning natural rainfall. When you only count the “blue water,” used for drinking and irrigation, cattle’s water footprint comes in much closer to pork and poultry, at 158 gallons per pound. That’s still roughly three times the amount of blue water it takes to produce a pound of chicken meat.

Recent research has confirmed prior studies that the last two decades in the U.S. have been the driest in the last 1,200 years. It’s partly caused by a climate pattern in the North Pacific Ocean that brings dry conditions and pushes storms further north. Fossil fuels have made this pattern even worse than usual, with greenhouse gases driving 50 percent of variations in the climate cycle over the last hundred years.

According to the study in Nature, carbon emissions might’ve “locked in” the new drought period. It could now be a permanent feature.

Meanwhile, human activity continues to deplete the planet’s freshwater supply. That includes data centers and chipmakers. Recent work by researchers at Arizona State University confirms we’re in trouble.

From NPR:

Jay Fagmiglietti, a study co-author and Global Futures Professor at Arizona State’s School of Sustainability, said the region’s freshwater loss could have major ripple effects.

“Can’t grow the same amount of food, and grow the population, and have all the data centers and chip manufacturers all at the same time,” he said. “That can’t happen anymore. We need to really be thinking about our priorities when we think about how we allocate water.”

The groundwater loss accelerated after 2015 as drought, heat and human demand combined to push the region into what researchers call a “mega-drying” state.

Fagmiglietti said that without concerted conservation efforts and changes in groundwater policy, Southwestern farmers will struggle to produce food in the years ahead.

Beef consumption has declined in the U.S. over the last several decades, but as a country, we still eat more than anyone else in the world.

Americans consume 13.82 million tons every year.

Now here’s the kicker:

Half of all beef consumption in the country comes from 12 percent of Americans. This startled me so much that I went out and confirmed it. Yes, 12 percent of Americans eat half of the country’s beef. The study was done by researchers at Tulane University. Most of those consumers are men in their 50s and 60s. From a purely demographic perspective, would you like to guess how those dudes vote?

So, there’s nothing wrong with having a steak or a hamburger every now and then. Like so many other things, somewhere around 10 percent of the population are causing half our problems. Not only are cattle draining our resources, the beef industry contributes roughly 10 times more carbon emissions than poultry.

It contributes 50 times more than beans.

At any rate, the Trump administration is demonstrating something that we’ve discussed before, and that’s the question of how our leaders are going to handle the climate crisis as it hits everyone in their personal lives with direct consequences they can’t ignore, in this case making beef unaffordable for the loudest, most obnoxious Americans who are ironically responsible for most of our problems.

As we quietly predicted, Trump and his goons are completely ignoring the core of the problem and blaming it on immigrants. Scapegoating was always going to be the default strategy for a party that officially doesn’t recognize climate change at all. Of course, we all know that’s bull. They understand it very well.

They’re lying.

This strategy will only become more brazen as the problem gets worse. Nobody really wants to address the real cause of the spike in beef. Because the real problem is that the beef industry should’ve never become as big as it has. It probably shouldn’t have ever existed in the first place, and it’s probably doomed.

If 12 percent of Americans continue demanding millions of tons of beef every year, high prices will be the least of our problems. By the time they’re finally forced to give up their Big Macs, we’re going to be living in a very different world. I’m not sure who they’re going to blame for their beef blues, but it’ll probably be immigrants and snowflakes. It’s not going to be pretty to watch MAGA suffer from beef withdrawal.

Have you tried talking to them lately?

Good luck with that.