Grocery prices got you down? Learn how to cut your food bill with NPR’s 4-part newsletter. Sign up here for budgeting tips, meal planning and more.

Beef has long been an iconic and beloved staple of the American diet, from barbecue to hamburgers and steaks. Even as retail prices have soared recently, U.S. demand for beef has remained strong.

Yet the U.S. cattle herd, including both beef and dairy cattle, is the smallest it has been in three-quarters of a century. Domestic producers had 86.2 million head of cattle on the first day of this year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, the lowest number since 1951.

What’s Eating America

When times are hard, we eat more beans. And it’s happening again now

A number of factors have been pushing livestock numbers down, including rising costs, drought, international competition and increased consolidation in the cattle industry. Now, there are fewer American farmers and ranchers than there were even a few years ago, according to Bill Bullard, CEO of the cattle and sheep producers group R-CALF USA. “We have likewise lost the cows that they once maintained,” he said. “So we have seen our herd shrink at an alarming rate for the past several decades.”

The record-high prices paid for cattle lately have also prompted many producers to sell their livestock and have dissuaded them from buying new animals to rebuild their herds, further diminishing the overall domestic cattle supply.

U.S. beef production has remained strong, though, because even though the herd size has shrunk in recent decades, cattle themselves have grown.

Raising cattle — like buying beef — is getting more expensive

Farmers and ranchers say expenses such as those for diesel fuel, equipment parts, fertilizer and even the animals themselves are all up. Operators who have to take out loans to buy cattle or fund infrastructure improvements are facing higher costs and have to decide how much debt they’re willing to tolerate in a volatile livestock market.

Amanda Hall, who lives in Lexington, Ky., on a farm with her husband, Reid Hall, and their two children, said the financial promise of the agricultural business can be unpredictable.

The Halls have a herd of about 125 “momma cows,” and they also “background” hundreds of steers per year, buying them after they’re weaned and selling them before the finishing stage (when they reach their final weight before slaughter) — what Amanda calls the “middle school” for livestock.

“We could put another 100 head out on grass, with what our grass will hopefully be this spring, but then you’re also wondering too, ‘Is that too much of a risk?'” she said in late February. “You’re also paying higher interest costs.”

The Halls love farming. After the couple graduated from the University of Kentucky, the two bought a group of 16 bred (pregnant) heifers and calved them out together. When they got married, a family friend gave them a White Park heifer as a wedding present.

But they said higher operational costs, the difficulty of borrowing money and the loss of workable farmland due to urban sprawl have made running their farm — as well as farms across the U.S. — a greater challenge.

“I think there’s still a sector of young people that have an interest in ag,” Reid Hall said, “but the barriers to entry to agriculture are huge.”

Many livestock producers are hanging up their hats. The USDA reported that there were 882,692 cattle operations in 2017 but just 732,123 five years later — a roughly 17% decline.

And those who leave aren’t being replaced by an equal number of young farmers. The median U.S. farmer is 58 years old, according to a 2023 U.S. Senate Committee on Aging report, making it the oldest workforce in the country.

What’s Eating America

One solution for Maine’s struggling fishing industry? Give fillets away for free

Even in the best of times, cattle producers are also at nature’s whim. Severe weather such as droughts and wildfires, which are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change, can occur without warning and saddle operators with unexpected costs. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in a 2023 paper, found that “farm earnings tend to decline with drought” and that farms in areas facing severe droughts suffered even worse financial losses.

Jason Cleere, a professor and extension beef cattle specialist at Texas A&M University, said the higher retail prices that beef shoppers see at the grocery store reflect the harsh financial reality facing farmers and ranchers.

“Our expenses have gone up just like your beef prices have gone up,” said Cleere, who has about 25 cows of his own. “I don’t want our ranchers to be painted as the bad guys that are evil that are making all the money. We’re just finally caught up to where we can make a good living now.”

A parasitic fly is helping to drive up the value of U.S. cattle

High demand for beef and fewer cattle are driving up prices, but another factor is hovering over the livestock market: the New World screwworm.

Largely eradicated in the U.S. since the mid-20th century, the screwworm has recently been detected throughout Mexico, including one instance in September less than 70 miles from the border with the United States. The parasitic bug resembling a housefly lays its eggs inside living animals like livestock, and the maggots hatched from those eggs burrow into their hosts and eat them alive.

What’s Eating America

It’s not shameful, it’s savvy: The shoppers redefining how to save money on groceries

In May 2025, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins blocked all imports of live cattle, horses and bison across the United States’ southern border with Mexico. According to USDA data, Mexico accounted for about 62% of U.S. cattle imports between 2020 and 2024.

With that supply cut off, there’s more demand for U.S. cattle. “If you take that number of cattle out of the beef supply chain, yes, it’s going to increase the value of the rest of the calves that ranchers are selling domestically here,” said Cleere.

And rebuilding a cattle herd is not a quick fix. A cow’s gestation period is nine months, and Cleere said a calf typically grows for at least 17 months before it’s slaughtered.

Consolidation and global trade cut into U.S. cattle profits

Cattle producers also have to contend with an increasingly consolidated meatpacking industry — the companies at the tail end of the supply chain that turn finished cattle into the beef products you buy at the grocery store.

Just four companies have accounted for more than 80% of the U.S. cattle-processing market since 1995, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It used to be you had butchers everywhere, and you had a lot of different options on how to market your cattle,” said Scott Wilbeck, a pet-funeral director and co-owner of two Texas cattle operations.

But those four firms now have a “monopoly” on the meatpacking sector and dictate sale prices, Wilbeck said. “The ranchers keep getting paid less and less for cattle, but yet your prices at the grocery store keep going higher and higher,” he added.

In November, President Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate the country’s top four meatpackers — JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef — for “potential collusion, price fixing, and price manipulation.”

The White House slammed the “foreign-dominated conglomerates that control America’s meat supply.” JBS is a Brazilian multinational company, while National Beef is majority-owned by the Brazilian food company Marfrig. (Cargill is based in Minnesota, while Tyson Foods is headquartered in Arkansas.)

Also last year, the USDA announced a plan to “fortify” the American beef industry, including by expanding grazing on federal lands and requiring that “Product of USA” labels be used only on beef from cattle that were born, raised and slaughtered domestically.

But another one of the administration’s solutions to surging U.S. beef prices — importing more meat from abroad — has rankled some in the cattle business. Trump announced in February that he would quadruple the amount of beef that can be imported from Argentina at a lower tariff, following an earlier increase in October.

According to the White House, the U.S. imported a record 4.64 billion pounds of beef in 2024, a roughly 24% increase over the previous year.

What’s Eating America

The MAHA movement is coming to school cafeterias. Here’s what that means for kids

Bullard, of R-CALF USA, suspects the move will lead to higher profits for meatpackers but may do little to lower retail beef prices.

“America has been growing its dependence on foreign beef and cattle in order to meet its beef protein appetite,” said Bullard, who is also a former cattle rancher. “So our [domestic] industry has been shrinking.”

Cattle producers such as the Halls and Wilbeck have taken to selling some of their beef directly to consumers by using local, independent meat processors. “We’re cutting out so many middlemen by doing that,” Wilbeck said.

Herd size is down, but U.S. beef production is steady

Even though the overall domestic cattle herd has shrunk, the animals themselves are beefier. Finished cattle weigh more now than they did decades ago, allowing producers to yield the same amount of meat from fewer livestock, Wilbeck said.

“There are fewer head, but those head are all going to be weighing 200, 300 pounds more than they did back in the 1950s,” Wilbeck said.

For example, he noted, a steer that weighed 1,000 pounds back then may bulk up to 1,500 pounds today. “Genetically, we’ve done a lot with these cattle,” Wilbeck added, “and they’re much larger now than they were when I was a kid.”

This means that domestic beef production has remained stable even as the overall herd size has dwindled. The U.S. produced 11,814 metric tons of beef and veal in 2025, USDA data shows, a slight uptick from 2005. If you go all the way back to 1960, total domestic beef production was just 7,195 metric tons.

What’s Eating America

How do you cut your food bill? NPR wants to hear your tips

If beef demand remains high, producers may respond by rebuilding their herds. The livestock industry tends to move in a roughly 10-year “cattle cycle,” where periods of contraction are followed by periods of expansion. But according to Reid Hall, that process will not occur quickly.

“You’re dealing with a live animal,” he said. “It’s not going to happen in five years. It’s going to take time to do it. But, like I say, if it’s appealing for people to start keeping breeding stock again and making those changes, hopefully that will happen.”

Grocery prices got you down? Learn how to cut your food bill with NPR’s 4-part newsletter. Sign up here for budgeting tips, meal planning and more.