Beef farmers getting screwed

I'm not talking about feedlot operators.

I'm talking about the manure-on-their-boots small time guys like the father and son team who graze their cattle here at Falling Downs.

If you look at the price farmers get for their cattle you'll see that over the last twenty years, beef has more or less tracked the rate of inflation. The cost of inputs, however, has run well ahead of the rate of inflation, and the cost of land has gone through the roof.

A hundred acre spread like this one is going to run you at least 600k. You can graze a dozen cow-calf pairs on that while growing enough hay to overwinter them. That'll make you a tidy return, if you sell those calves off after a year, of maybe twelve thousand bucks. That wouldn't cover a minimum wage paycheque if the farmer got paid by the hour, and quite aside from that, it represents a whopping half percent return on your investment!

There should be some way of differentiating between the beef you buy that comes off feedlots and the beef you buy that comes from happy critters roaming around open meadows. I'm not sure there's any difference in the taste of the steak, but I for one feel better knowing that the animal that gave its life so I can eat had a decent one herself before it turned up on my grill.

There's a whole lot of money being made between when the farmer gets two dollars a pound for his beef cattle and you paying twenty bucks a pound to put a steak on the BBQ.

The guy with manure on his boots should be seeing a little more of that cash.