Beef prices reach highest level since 1987

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite


LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) - The highest beef prices in almost three decades have arrived just before the start of grilling season, causing sticker shock for both consumers and restaurant owners - and relief isn't likely anytime soon.

A dwindling number of cattle and growing export demand from countries such as China and Japan have caused the average retail cost of fresh beef to climb to $5.28 a pound in February, up almost a quarter from January and the highest price since 1987.

Everything that's produced is being consumed, said Kevin Good, an analyst at CattleFax, a Colorado-based information group. And prices likely will stay high for a couple of years as cattle producers start to rebuild their herds amid big questions about whether the Southwest and parts of the Midwest will see enough rain to replenish pastures.

Meanwhile, quick trips to the grocery store could drag on a little longer as shoppers search for cuts that won't break the budgets. Patrons at one market in Lubbock seemed resigned to the high prices, but not happy.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140412/DAD4LIP02.html

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In this July 25, 2012 file photo butcher Freddie Quina cuts meat at Super Cao Nguyen in Oklahoma City. The highest beef prices in decades _ fresh beef climbing to $5.28 a pound in February 2014, up from $5.04 in January _ have some consumers spending extra time in meat market aisles as they search for cuts that won’t break their budgets. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

[pscot]

1. Price of pork is way up too

All those millions of piglets killed by diarrhea

[Lasher]

2. Seafood is sky high too.

Guess we still have chicken. So far.

[pscot]

4. We used to have fish once a week

No more.

[NickB79]

36. I'm going to take up fishing again

The only problem is finding a lake or river that isn't too polluted to eat fish from more than once or twice a month

[msongs]

3. beef is 100% unneccesary in lives of humans nt

[Gore1FL]

16. So is couscous and tarter sauce.

People enjoy these things, however. If they are willing to pay the price, I see no harm in allowing them to have it.

[Helen Borg]

20. Correct. It's a habit.

It will change, if necessary.

[delta17]

21. So is the internet. nt.

[Jesus Malverde]

5. I'm curious if this doesn't really reflect that the prices have been artificially low

With subsides for ag products that feed the cattle. Subsidies of water for farmers etc.

[yuiyoshida]

6. I wonder if McDonalds and Burger King had to cut a deal

to get their batch? IF so..that means their prices will rise soon. So will all fast food places that serve beef...

I am sure glad I don't eat it... more for you guys, I know....bon appetit!

[CFLDem]

26. Their prices are already sky high excluding the value menu.

Might as well eat at a real restaurant for what the Ronald is charging these days.

[happyslug]

33. Hamburger is almost all old milk cows

The Cows produce milk and when they get to old, are made into Ground beef., It should be noted Milk is also up.

[blackspade]

7. Perhaps this will have people eating less meat.

That is a long term win for our health and the environment.

[sense]

11. Actually a long term win would be this:

TED talk: Reversing Global Warming with Livestock

&feature=youtu.be

[Helen Borg]

19. Yep!

[RebelOne]

27. I am a vegetarian, so I save a lot of money on meat.

Plus, I am 75 and my health is very good. My advice is to stay away from red meat.

[happyslug]

34. My Grandfather ate nothing but red meat and lived to be 82

Would have lived longer, but a drunk driver got him as he walked from my Aunt's home to my father's home. He ate eggs baked in lard in the morning, red meat for lunch and dinner etc.

On the other hand never owned a car and never learned to drive, if wanted to go somewhere he would walk. The distance between my aunts and my father's home was about 40 miles. One day he had a fight with his daughter (my aunt) and put his clothes in a blanker roll and started to walk to my father's house. The previous year he had had an argument with my father and did the same thing, but that time walking from my father's home to his daughter's. The 40 miles was a long day's trip, but he had done it dozens of times before.

He also would go visit his own sister over the Appalachian mountains, again walking along US 40. Then he would use his blanket warm to sleep in some farmer's field when he was sleepy. He did that at least once in his 80s, and several times in his 70s.

Sorry, red meat is NOT a killer, if you keep active and thus your worse enemy is the automobile, for it encourages you NOT to be active, but instead drive to where you want to go.

[NickB79]

37. Same here; my great-grandfather lived to 96

He didn't stop farming and go to live in a retirement home until he was 90! I'm sure his diet for most of his life included plenty of butter, lard, eggs, whole milk and red meat, but this was balanced by the massive amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables he and my great-grandmother ate from their gardens. Between that and the crazy amount of physical labor he put into the farm his entire life, the red meat and fat didn't seem to do him much harm.

Same story with my grandfather, who raised 8 sons and lived to be 86. My grandmother used to whip up 20 eggs EVERY MORNING for breakfast. Every day. And her pound cake? A pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, and a pound of eggs.

[RebelOne]

38. Well, I plan to make it to 100 if I can stop smoking.

But I am working on it.

[Vashta Nerada]

8. Thankfully I don't eat much beef.

[tableturner]

9. Higher beef prices cause higher pork and chicken prices, all things being equal

Even without the pork virus, when beef goes up, people go to pork and chicken as cheaper substitutes, which lowers the supply of those items, causing them to also go up.

[ErikJ]

10. That's nothing compared to nuts which have tripled in past few years.

Have you noticed the high price of walnuts and other nuts lately? You're not alone. California walnuts and almonds have seen prices soar by 10 to 15 percent in the past year as worldwide demand, especially from China, has increased, according to a recent report from Food Business News. The price increases have led to higher profits for nut growers, but they have also led to a surprising offshoot: an increase in nut-related crime.

The trend started a few years ago. Back in 2012, two truckloads of walnuts valued at $300,000 were stolen in Northern California. That was just the beginning. In November some thieves took off with 140,000 pounds of walnuts valued at $400,000, a crime that was called "brazen" in a report from the Los Angeles Times. Two men were arrested for that crime a few days ago and have been charged with auto theft and grand theft.

Those big thefts are just the tip of the nut pile. The Associated Press recently looked into this string of nut thefts and came up with a long list of crimes, including hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of almonds and pistachios. The stolen nuts are reportedly destined for the black market or for sale in some of Los Angeles' farmers markets.

All of this comes in response to a tripling of walnut prices over the past five years, which has inspired seemingly everybody in California to plant nut crops. "Right now, everybody wants to be a nut grower because it's kind of like the gold rush of the 1850s," almond farmer Kevin Fondse told the AP. "Everybody wants the gold."
.................
http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/nut-job-thieves-are-stealing-california-walnuts-by-the-truckload

[JDPriestly]

17. This was the plan that I heard about in the early 1970s in London.

The oil producing countries worried that they were selling their irreplaceable and exhaustible resource, oil in the dollars of that day at low prices. They wanted a deal to protect their countries' economies because oil was about the only thing they had that they could sell.

The theory then was that we would have international trade. Plan was that the role of the US would be the breadbasket to the world.

Here is a 2010 report on the top 10 beef- and pork-producing countries in the world.

Now we see that we have international trade and the US is exporting food to the point that food prices are rising.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. search out a local beef grower.

One of the many advantages of rural living, we got a whole small organic grass fed steer for 4.25#,
enough beef to last us for at least a couple of years.

We have a regular chest freezer that is NOT self defrosting, so it will keep that long without freezer burn.

for those who can make the investment, it is a great buy.

[jwirr]

22. Plus it moves production to local where it should be. The beef we buy locally are also raised on

land that is called marginal because it is not suited to large scale farming.

[japple]

13. I paid more for gas on Friday (4/11) even with the discount at Kroger, than I've paid

in a LONG time. Guess the PTB know it's time for people/families to be grilling, traveling, trying to enjoy being outdoors after a long, hard winter, and they resent it. Gotta tax those sinful ways.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. Once again, time to wallow in smug vegetarian indifference. nt

[tofuandbeer]

15. (I don't eat it)...but can that be a sign of inflation—when beef prices go up?

[jwirr]

23. I think we have to be careful when we look at any one answer solution to this problem. Many of the

posters here have suggested a variety of answers and IMO they are all correct. Drought, price of fuel, lower subsidies, exporting more, etc. All of it adds up to higher prices for all proteins.

We live on a small acreage and are growing much of our own meats: pork, lamb, chickens, turkey and we would like to run a couple of beef calves eventually. Of course that is not an option for most people.

[Helen Borg]

18. If it means people start eating more veggies...

That could be good. People eat too much meat, and meat production is very inefficient and a huge waste of resources. We do not need to eat any meat for staying in good health (if anything, the reverse is true). Most people, when they think of having a large, meatless and dairyless salad for lunch, imagine that they will be starving for the rest of the day. However, if your salad has some variety of veggies in it, perhaps a few nuts, an avocado etc, you'll find that you feel much better after lunch than eating your hamburger and a block of cheese. And before you know it, that will become your habit, and it will bee odd to have meat and cheese instead,

[Marthe48]

24. When inflation was so bad in the 1970's

There were some solutions that got us through. The grocery stores offered a soy/beef burger mix, that was a little cheaper than ground beef. We liked the soy beef mix, but the stores here stopped offering it when the economy caught up with the rise in oil prices. There were generic canned goods--who remembers the black and white labels on everything from green beans to beer? Which I haven't seen for quite a while. I saw a report that for the first time, the U.S. is eating more chicken thatn beef--well, duh, look at the prices. I'm living in a time where a freaking hamburger cost as much as steak used to, and where recipes call for meat as a flavoring, not a main ingredient. I use alternative protein sources, but things like dry beans, cheese, and so on are climbing in price too. There is no cheap food! We are still able to afford groceries, but when I see bread is $2.00/loaf, applies are $1.00 apiece, milk is $3 or $4/gallon or more, I wonder what in the hell people are going to do. Soylent Green? I hope I don't live to see the day.

We can do better. We need to do better.

[Omaha Steve]

25. I remember meatless Mondays

Early 70's.

[Marthe48]

28. Yes

seems like we are always chasing the elusive steak. I think the ancient tribes had more luck!

[HubertHeaver]

31. I remember meatless Fridays

Pre-Vatican II

[DeSwiss]

29. Keep it.

- Don't eat it. It's all full of poisons.

Seriously.

K&R

[center]WHERE OUR MEAT COMES FROM




[/center]

[magical thyme]

30. I expect my dog and cat food prices will go up as well.

Beyond that, it's a good thing. I'll be grilling marinated eggplant, tomatoes, onion, peppers and mushrooms this summer, to serve w/pilaf. mmmmm.....

[wordpix]

32. $5/lb is nothing---if you want grass fed, no hormone/no antibiotics beef, it's $20/lb

It used to be grass is what cattle ate and that's all you could get. Now you get feedlot beef---cattle are fed anything and everything, as long as it's cheap, and they're forced into crowded unsanitary conditions most of their lives.

I wouldn't touch cattle lot beef no matter what price it sells for. I truly believe it's one of the causes of cancer, which now effects 1/3 Americans in their lifetime. If you don't eat grass fed, pasture raised beef, you're putting yourself at risk. Ditto for dairy.

[NickB79]

35. Plant more vegetables and fruit trees, go fishing, and hunt more

Just made a big pot of chili. I used 1/2 lb of beef instead of a full pound, and added an extra can of beans and frozen, shredded zucchini from my garden.

I've got 12 tomato, 20 pepper, 50 broccoli, and 50 cabbage seedlings growing under growlights right now; I'll be planting more today.

I just planted 5 apple trees, 2 apricot trees, and a pear tree this weekend. I have 25 plum and 25 cherry saplings ordered from the county that will be here in a week to make a multi-purpose hedge (windbreak, snowfence, fruit production, wildlife habitat).

My daughter is 4 yr old now; time to break out the fishing poles and spend some quality time with her catching sunfish off the shoreline this summer

Also, time to introduce my wife to the deliciousness that is groundhog/woodchuck. Most people think they're just pests, but I used to hunt them as a kid when they'd tear up alfalfa and soybean fields, and my grandma would make mouthwatering dishes out of them (old-school Depression-era ingenuity). And there are a lot of alfalfa and soy fields around here. Time to start knocking on some farmer's doors and introducing myself