Big Take Where’s the Beef? Inside the Fragile Cattle Market
6 snips
Feb 17, 2026 Casey Schurler, a fifth-generation Oklahoma cattle rancher running ReFarm, reflects on family ranching under high costs and a shrinking herd. Enda Curran, a Bloomberg commodities reporter, breaks down rising beef prices and supply-chain pressures. They discuss herd declines, drought and disease, production and processing strains, and policy moves like imports and antitrust probes.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Fifth-Generation Rancher Feeling the Squeeze
- Casey Schurler describes running a fifth-generation ranch and feeling squeezed despite high retail beef prices.
- She says inflationary costs and volatility make running a profitable ranch increasingly difficult.
Multiple Forces Shrinking Beef Supply
- U.S. beef prices rose due to a shrinking herd, drought, rising production costs, and disease threats.
- Those overlapping factors are limiting supply while demand stays strong, keeping prices high.
Beef Supply Is Slow To Expand
- The cattle production cycle is long: about four years before a bred heifer adds meaningful supply.
- That biology makes beef supply slow to respond, so policy or market fixes take years to ease prices.