Beef Prices Falling Slightly After Record Highs in July

Sep 03, 2024

As Americans head to their backyard grills to celebrate the end of summer, Bernt Nelson, an economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says consumers may see some much-needed slight savings as retail prices decrease from unprecedented highs.

"Beef prices set records in the month of July. If we take a look at USDA ERS’s estimates for the all-fresh beef value, that all-fresh value for the month of July was $8.15 per pound," Nelson said. "This is important because it marks the first time in the history of data collection that the all-fresh average moved above $8. We have a lot of cuts that moved up in price, especially through that July timeframe."

Nelson says supply of cattle will remain tight for the foreseeable future due to the long-term nature of the cattle production cycle, keeping costs high.

"So, to get the forces driving this beef, it is mostly the low inventory, and this goes back several years. You know, we've been talking about this since 2020, and as these prices have improved, there's business incentives for farmers to keep selling cattle, and that's kept us contracting or moving along in this contraction phase of the cattle cycle," Nelson said. "Now, thinking about this, there's also a lot of obstacles to growth here, and as long as those incentives are greater than the incentive to keep, we're going to keep contracting in this phase."

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.