Stop the Idiocracy: The price of an empty pasture

Friday, August 21, 2026

The price of an empty pasture

A darkly whimsical illustration depicts the collapse of an American meatpacking industry beneath punishing heat and economic strain. A barefoot, red-haired woman in a tattered burgundy slip stands before a vast, rusting meatpacking plant whose machinery, pipes and towers twist into mournful human faces. She holds a nearly empty plate bearing only a tiny sprig of food. Beyond the shuttered factory stretches a parched, cracked landscape scattered with cattle, abandoned feeding troughs and fencing. At right, a skeletal cattle figure presides beside an ornate sign declaring beef an increasingly unaffordable luxury, while an almost grotesquely cheerful sun burns overhead. Cobwebbed controls, empty meat hooks, a discarded steak and an abandoned shopping trolley reinforce themes of plant closures, scarcity, rising beef prices and industrial decline.

image generated via ChatGPT

Will Tyson Foods’ shuttering of two US plants mean even greater pain at the grocery store in Trumpistan? {The Guardian 21 August}

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/21/tyson-foods-close-facilities-beef-prices-cattle-shortage

Pray the experts have got this one right. Nobody hold their breath, though —

FTA: Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in the US, announced last week that it is closing two of its facilities in Iowa and Utah and selling a beef facility in Washington state, and will lay off hundreds of workers as the supply of cattle hits a 75-year low.

The historic cattle shortage has been driven by a multi-year drought, rising costs and severe economic pressures, including consolidation among cattle ranchers. Beef prices have soared over the last year due to the shortage, though economists said the Tyson plant closures likely won’t hit consumer prices so hard.

Earlier this month, Tyson reported in its third-quarter earnings that beef volume is down 15.9% and beef operating loss is at $138m.

Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, said the US has had excess capacity for processing and packaging beef for several years now, and beef that would have been processed in Tyson’s Iowa and Utah plants will just be rerouted.

“For the majority of the last 40 years, nationally, the US has had more capacity to harvest cattle than we’ve had cattle,” he said. “Anytime you have too much capacity, or ‘too much’ supply relative to what is needed in the market, that puts downward pressure on the margins in that sector. That’s not new.”

With not enough cattle to harvest, meatpacking plants have been taking measures to slow down operations, including reducing shifts or cutting Saturday workdays. If operations don’t pick up, plants eventually close.

But these closures won’t change the amount of beef that is packed and processed, since the country has enough infrastructure to take on the current supply, experts said. While it may slightly increase transportation costs for the cattle producers who are located close to the shuttered Tyson plants, it is not likely to affect the price of beef overall.

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