Fewer Cattle, Costlier Beef: Twenty Years of the U.S. Beef Industry and What It Means in San Joaquin County
Fewer Cattle, Costlier Beef: Twenty Years of the U.S. Beef Industry and What It Means in San Joaquin County
LodiEye — September 2026
The United States started 2026 with 86.2 million cattle and calves, the smallest herd since 1951. Ground beef averaged $6.92 a pound nationally in August. Beef imports are at a record, and two of the four companies that slaughter most of the country's cattle are controlled from Brazil. This report walks through how the industry got here over the last twenty years, from the ranch to the grocery store, and then looks at what those national trends mean for cattle producers, dairies and shoppers in San Joaquin County.
The herd: two contractions and a partial rebuild
The U.S. cattle herd moves in long cycles. Ranchers expand when calves pay well and pasture is good, then sell off cows when drought or costs squeeze them. Over the past twenty years the herd shrank from 2007 to 2014, when high corn prices and the 2011–2012 drought in Texas and the southern Plains forced heavy culling. It rebuilt from 2014 to 2019 after record calf prices in 2014. Then it shrank again from 2019 to today under renewed drought across the Plains and West, higher feed, fuel and fertilizer costs, and higher interest rates.
The number of farms with beef cows fell 15 percent between the 2017 and 2022 agricultural censuses, to about 622,000. Most are small: about four in five have fewer than 50 cows. The average age of U.S. producers was 58.1 in 2022, and that matters here because an older rancher facing record calf prices has a strong reason to sell heifers now rather than keep them to rebuild a herd that will take years to pay back.
Millions of head. All cattle and calves on the left axis; beef cows on the right axis. Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Cattle reports (revised estimates; 2026 is the first estimate).
There are small signs of a turn. Beef replacement heifers, the young females kept back for breeding, rose 1 percent to 4.71 million in January 2026, the first increase in years. A heifer kept back this year does not produce a calf that reaches slaughter until about 30 months later, so industry analysts at CattleFax put the first real increase in fed-cattle slaughter around 2028.
A second supply problem came from the south. Mexico shipped about 1.25 million feeder cattle to U.S. feedlots in 2024. USDA closed the border to Mexican cattle in May 2025 because of New World screwworm, a flesh-eating fly larva, and only the Douglas, Arizona crossing had reopened as of late August 2026, starting at 700 head a day with a plan to rise to 1,300.
How beef moves: ranch to grocery store
The diagram below shows the main steps and where outside supply and ownership enter. Cow-calf ranchers raise calves on grass. Stocker operators and feedlots grow them to finished weight, usually on grain. Packers slaughter and cut them. Retailers and restaurants sell the beef. Imports come in mostly as lean trimmings that are blended with fattier U.S. trim to make ground beef.
Swipe sideways to see the full diagram. Figures are national. Big Four share is of fed steer and heifer slaughter. Sources: USDA NASS, USDA ERS, USDA Packers and Stockyards Division, company filings.
Feedlots
Feeding is concentrated in the Plains. Feedlots with 1,000 or more head held 82.7 percent of all cattle on feed on January 1, 2026. With fewer cattle, feeders have kept animals on feed longer, and carcass weights hit records in 2024 and 2025. Heavier cattle have kept beef output from falling as fast as head counts, but they also produce more fat trim, which raises demand for lean beef to blend into hamburger. That lean beef comes from cull cows, including dairy cows, and from imports. Oklahoma City feeder steers set an all-time monthly record of $355.55 per hundredweight in August 2025, and USDA forecasts about $364 for 2026.
Packers
Four companies, Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef, have bought roughly 80 to 85 percent of fed steers and heifers since 2008. That share has barely moved in two decades. What has changed is who owns the plants and whether they make money. Packers earned very large margins in 2020 and 2021, when COVID-era plant slowdowns backed up cattle and the farmer's share of the retail beef dollar fell below 40 percent. Since 2023 the math has flipped. Cattle cost more than packers can recover from selling beef, and Tyson lost $1.135 billion in its beef segment in fiscal 2025.
Tyson closed its Lexington, Nebraska plant in January 2026, cut its Amarillo plant to one shift, and in August 2026 announced it would close its Joslin, Illinois plant and its Eagle Mountain, Utah case-ready operation and try to sell its Pasco, Washington plant. JBS reported a $427 million loss on North American beef in the first half of 2026.
Adjusted daily slaughter capacity in head per day. Orange marks companies controlled from Brazil: JBS, and National Beef under Marfrig, now MBRF Global Foods. "Other" is about 20 smaller plants averaging 921 head per day. This predates Tyson's August 2026 closures. Source: University of Nebraska–Lincoln Center for Agricultural Profitability, Lexington plant closure webinar, 2025.
Antitrust questions have come back. Tyson and Cargill agreed in January 2026 to pay $87.5 million to settle consumer claims in a long-running price-fixing class action, which a federal judge approved in May 2026. JBS settled earlier. The Justice Department has an open investigation into meatpacker pricing that became public in May 2026. No charges have been filed.
Retail
Ground beef cost about $2.60 a pound in 2006. It crossed $4 in the spring of 2020 and reached $6.92 in August 2026. The Choice beef retail value tracked by USDA passed $10 a pound in October 2025. The split of that retail dollar has shifted. In 2025, ranchers and feeders received a larger share than in most recent years, because cattle prices rose faster than anything else. The packer's margin stayed thin. The gap between wholesale and retail prices widened noticeably in the second half of 2025, and that is the part of the chain now drawing the most political attention.
Dollars per retail pound. Farm value is the retail price times USDA's farmer's share. The packer spread is the farm-to-wholesale spread and the retail spread is the wholesale-to-retail spread. Source: USDA ERS, Meat Price Spreads.
100% ground beef. Blue bars are the U.S. city average. The orange bar is the West census region, which includes California. Values for 2006 and annual 2014 and 2019 are approximate. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Average Price data, series APU0000703112 and APU0400703112.
USDA labeling rules changed on January 1, 2026. Beef can now carry a "Product of USA" label only if the animal was born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States. Before that, imported beef that was only cut or packed here could use the label. The rule is voluntary. Mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef was repealed in December 2015 after Canada and Mexico won a World Trade Organization case against it.
Foreign beef and foreign owners
Imports
Twenty years ago imports mostly filled a narrow need for lean grinding beef. They dipped around 2010 to 2012, when drought-driven cow slaughter put plenty of lean beef on the U.S. market, and then climbed as the herd shrank. Imports hit about 5.4 billion pounds in 2025, roughly 17 percent of total U.S. beef supply. USDA's latest forecast before the August 2026 policy change put 2026 at a record 6.1 billion pounds.
Billions of pounds, carcass weight. Values for 2006, 2011 and 2016 are approximate. 2025 is a USDA estimate. 2026 is USDA's forecast before the August 2026 tariff-rate quota expansion. Sources: USDA ERS Livestock and Meat International Trade Data; USDA forecasts as reported by The Hill.
The biggest change is where imports come from. Brazil had no access for fresh beef in 2006. It gained access in 2016, was suspended in 2017 after an inspection-bribery scandal, returned in 2020, and is now the largest supplier, shipping about 325,000 metric tons in the first half of 2026 despite tariffs. Argentina was shut out after a 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak, returned in 2018, and in February 2026 had its low-tariff quota raised from 20,000 to 100,000 metric tons.
Millions of pounds, carcass weight. Total 2024 imports were 4,635 million pounds. Canada and Mexico are outside the tariff-rate quota under USMCA. Source: USDA ERS Livestock and Meat International Trade Data.
On August 26, 2026, a presidential proclamation added 300,000 metric tons of low-tariff access for lean beef trimmings, about 661 million pounds, in three batches opening September 1, October 1 and October 31. The access goes to countries without their own quota, which in practice means mostly Brazil and Paraguay. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimated the waived tariffs at about $650 million and noted that calf prices had fallen by $300 to $400 a head over the two months before its analysis. Five days later USDA announced its Ranchers First Initiative, which includes insurance coverage for ranchers who keep heifers back to rebuild herds and loan guarantees for regional processors.
Foreign ownership
In 2006 all four big packers were American-owned. Brazil's JBS bought Swift and Company in 2007, then Smithfield's beef business and the Five Rivers feedlots in 2008. The Justice Department and 17 states sued to stop JBS from also buying National Beef, and JBS dropped that deal in 2009. Brazil's Marfrig bought a controlling stake in National Beef in 2018 and raised it to about 82 percent in 2019. Marfrig merged with BRF in 2025 to form MBRF Global Foods. JBS listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2025, with the Batista family keeping about 85 percent of the voting control.
None of this foreign position came from building new plants. It came from buying existing American companies. By plant capacity, about four in ten head of U.S. fed-cattle slaughter capacity is now controlled from Brazil. Foreign ownership of farmland is a separate question. Foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land reached 45.85 million acres at the end of 2023, 3.6 percent of privately held farmland, but that land is mostly forest and wind or solar leases rather than cattle ranches.
What it means in San Joaquin County
San Joaquin County's cattle business looks different from the national picture in one important way. Most local cattle are dairy animals, so the county feels the beef market largely through its dairies.
A dairy county that also sells beef
The most recent USDA county estimates, for January 2022, counted about 220,000 cattle and calves in San Joaquin County. Of those, about 105,000 were milk cows and about 17,300 were beef cows. The rest were heifers, steers, bulls and calves. California as a whole had 5.05 million cattle and calves on January 1, 2026, fourth among the states.
Head. "Other cattle and calves" is the county total minus milk and beef cows. Source: USDA NASS Pacific Regional Office, California Cattle County Estimates, May 2022.
The county crop report counted about 113,000 acres of pasture and range in 2025, about 101,000 of it unirrigated. Dairies sell beef in two forms: older cows culled from the milking herd, which become lean beef for hamburger, and calves not needed as replacements. That makes national beef prices a real part of local dairy income.
Local cattle sales
The county's cattle and calves were worth $165.0 million in 2025, nearly the same as the $165.6 million in 2024 and up from $129.0 million in 2022. Underneath the flat total, the county's average price rose from $131 to $157 per hundredweight while the number of head sold fell from about 146,000 to 140,000 and total live weight fell about 17 percent. The agricultural commissioner's 2025 report described it the same way: prices increased notably, but inventory declined. That matches the national story of fewer animals selling for more.
Bars show gross value in millions of dollars (left axis). The line shows the county's average price per hundredweight of live weight (right axis); the 2022 price was not collected for this report. Gross value is not net income to producers. Sources: San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner, Crop Reports 2023–2025; Escalon Times for the 2022 value.
The county's average of $157 per hundredweight is well below national prices for feeder steers, which were above $350. That gap likely reflects the local mix, which includes many cull dairy cows and young calves that sell for less per pound than feeder steers.
Feed and grazing costs moved in opposite directions
Local feed got cheaper. Alfalfa hay in the county fell from $315 a ton in 2023 to $203 in 2025, and the commissioner's report attributes the drop in hay and silage prices to a supply surplus. That lowers costs for dairies and for ranchers who feed hay. Grazing land moved the other way: the crop report's per-acre value for pasture and range rose from $54 in 2024 to $75 in 2025, with irrigated pasture near $277 an acre.
Alfalfa in dollars per ton (left axis). Pasture and range in dollars per acre, all types combined (right axis). Source: San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner, Crop Reports 2023–2025.
Dairies and beef-on-dairy calves
Across the country, dairies have been breeding part of their herds to beef bulls, usually Angus, and selling the crossbred calves into the beef system. Those calves sold for as much as $1,500 a head in April 2026 and around $1,300 in September. The calf income helped dairies through a year when milk prices were low. It also has a cost: fewer dairy heifers are being raised, and replacement dairy cows hit a record average of $3,130 a head in April 2026. With about 105,000 milk cows, San Joaquin County dairies are directly exposed to both sides of that trade. Milk was worth $556 million in the county in 2025, and cattle and calves were worth $165 million.
Where local cattle go
Local sellers use auction yards such as Escalon Livestock Market, which runs weekly sales for beef cattle, dairy cattle and butcher cows, and Cattlemen's Livestock Market in Galt just north of Lodi. The nearest large beef plants are in the southern San Joaquin Valley. In 2024 Central Valley Meat of Hanford bought Cargill's Fresno plant, which processed about 1,600 head a day. Central Valley Meat already owned its Hanford plant, Harris Ranch Beef in Selma, and Harris Ranch Feeding at Coalinga, the state's largest feedlot. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued over concern that the purchase could lower prices paid to cattle sellers, and the settlement kept the Fresno plant running and protected about 700 jobs for at least 12 months. Cargill and Central Valley Meat were two of the largest San Joaquin Valley processors buying cows culled from dairies. The national concentration story has a local version: dairies and ranchers here have fewer large buyers than they did a few years ago.
Swipe sideways to see the full diagram. Simplified. Herd numbers are USDA county estimates for January 2022. Sources: USDA NASS, San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner, Central Valley Meat and California Department of Justice announcements.
Why imports matter to local dairies
Most imported beef is lean trimming used to make ground beef, and that is the same product lean cull cows supply. The August 2026 quota expansion for lean trimmings therefore competes most directly with the beef that San Joaquin County dairies sell when they cull cows. How much it lowers local cull cow prices will depend on how much of the added quota actually fills before November 30 and how much of it would have entered anyway at the higher tariff.
Screwworm
The county's 2025 crop report notes that New World screwworm had not been detected in California. The fly has been confirmed in Texas and New Mexico in 2026. For local producers, the main effect of the Mexican border closure has been through tighter national supplies of feeder cattle and the higher prices that followed.
What shoppers pay
BLS does not publish a beef price for Lodi or Stockton. The closest published figure is the West census region, where 100% ground beef averaged $7.23 a pound in April 2026, above the national average. Nationally, the beef and veal price index was up 9.4 percent over the year to July 2026, while overall inflation was 3.4 percent. The San Francisco-area index, the nearest metro index BLS publishes, showed grocery prices down 3.1 percent in the two months ending in August 2026, with food overall up 3.1 percent over the year. Imported lean trimmings are aimed at ground beef, so any price relief from the August quota change is most likely to show up in hamburger rather than steaks.
What to watch
For the rest of 2026 and into 2027, the national signals that matter most locally are whether heifer retention keeps rising in the January 2027 cattle report, how much of the 300,000-ton lean trim quota fills before it closes on November 30, whether more Mexican border crossings reopen, and whether the Justice Department's meatpacker investigation produces any action. Locally, the 2026 crop report, likely out in the fall of 2027, will show whether cattle prices kept rising faster than the county's head count fell, and the Fresno plant's operation after the settlement period will matter to dairies selling cull cows.
| Measure | Then | Now |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. cattle and calves, Jan. 1 | 96.3M (2006) | 86.2M (2026) |
| U.S. beef cows, Jan. 1 | 32.7M (2006) | 27.6M (2026) |
| U.S. ground beef, per pound | ~$2.60 (2006) | $6.92 (Aug. 2026) |
| U.S. beef imports | ~3.1B lb (2006) | ~5.4B lb (2025) |
| Big Four packers under Brazilian control | 0 of 4 (2006) | 2 of 4 (2026) |
| San Joaquin County cattle and calves value | $129.0M (2022) | $165.0M (2025) |
| San Joaquin County average cattle price, per cwt | $132 (2023) | $157 (2025) |
| San Joaquin County alfalfa, per ton | $315 (2023) | $203 (2025) |
Sources
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Cattle, January 30, 2026, and executive briefing
- USDA NASS Pacific Regional Office, California Cattle County Estimates, 2022
- San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner, 2025 Crop Report and 2024 Crop Report
- Escalon Times, County Ag Receipts Top $3.2 Billion Mark (2022 crop report figures)
- Stocktonia, Almonds become San Joaquin County's top crop, September 25, 2026
- USDA Economic Research Service, Meat Price Spreads; Livestock and Meat International Trade Data; Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED, U.S. ground beef average price and West region ground beef average price; CPI, San Francisco Area, August 2026
- USAFacts, What is the average price of beef in the US?
- American Farm Bureau Federation, Knowns and Unknowns on the Presidential Beef Proclamation and Smaller Cattle Herd Creates Market Volatility
- USDA, Ranchers First Initiative announcement, August 31, 2026
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln Center for Agricultural Profitability, Tyson Lexington plant closure webinar
- Oklahoma Farm Report, Tyson Foods shuts down major beef processing plants; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, US tries to deal with beef imports
- The Hill, How much beef does the US import; Newsweek, America's top beef suppliers; Rio Times, Argentina left out of expanded US beef quota
- Investigate Midwest, More foreign ownership of U.S. beef processors; National Provisioner, The U.S. meatpacking industry: Investment invasion
- MEAT+POULTRY, Central Valley Meat acquires Cargill's beef plant in Fresno; Agriculture Dive, Cargill sells California beef plant; Fresno Bee via AOL, Laid-off Fresno meat-processing workers thrown lifeline after settlement
- Ag Proud, Cattle markets continue adding value to dairy operations and Replacement dairy cow prices hit new record high; Dairy Herd, Beef-on-dairy calf prices cool, but demand holds and Heavy steers and lean cows
- Escalon Livestock Market, market reports; Cattlemen's Livestock Market Galt, market reports