The retail price of beef is up in all categories from its price one year ago, and experts see no sign of it coming down anytime soon.
How did we get here? Dr. Daniel Sumner, a distinguished professor of agricultural economics at University of California, Davis, says it all comes down to the issue of high demand and low supply. But Brian Stephenson, president of the Shasta County Cattlemen’s Association, says the profit margins of major international meatpackers may have more to do with it.
Find out why beef prices are so high below.
Why Are Beef Prices So High?
Sumner says the increased demand for protein in recent years is a major factor impacting high beef prices.
“There’s been a lot of news and interest in expanding protein, particularly high quality balanced proteins in people’s diet. Whether you’re an old person, or a young person and you get a lot of exercise, or you don’t, the message is eat more protein,” said Sumner.
This movement has driven shoppers to spend more on high quality proteins during their trips to the grocery store. But, from chicken and pork, to milk and even Greek yogurt, there are plenty of different forms of protein on the market. Why are beef prices in particular increasing?
Sumner says this is due to interplay with a historically small U.S. cattle herd.
As of Jan. 1, 2026, the U.S. cattle herd size was at 86.2 million, the smallest it’s been in 75 years — and it’s been on the decline since 2021. Meanwhile, the selling price of live cattle has been on the rise since 2020. This presents a dilemma for ranchers: Should they sell their cattle now to take advantage of record-high prices, or preserve their herd to build the population back up?
“What people have been doing is putting more of them in the market now,” said Sumner.
This has caused the U.S. cattle herd to “(stabilize) at this really low level,” maintaining a low supply of beef in the market. When combined with historically high demand for protein, Sumner says this relationship is effectively responsible for rising beef prices.
Why Is the National Cattle Herd So Small?
Sumner has a couple ideas how the cattle herd got so small.
One is productivity. According to Sumner, technological and scientific advancements have allowed modern cows to yield more meat than in the past. Because of this, fewer cows are needed to meet the international demand for beef, causing the cow population to decline gradually over time.
Another is the spike in the selling price of cattle that occurred in 2023 and held at a relatively consistent price through 2025. Sumner says this caused ranchers to sell “old cows and heifers to take advantage of what they thought would be temporary high prices.” In reality, cattle prices jumped even higher in late 2025 and 2026, delaying the herd rebuilding period that ranchers might have expected to have arrived by now.
Sumner also thinks the small cattle numbers could be attributed to the downward trend in U.S. beef consumption that occurred before the most recent spike in demand.
What Do Local Ranchers Say Is Driving Beef Prices?
Stephenson agrees that demand “definitely has not gone down,” and has stayed consistent despite rising beef prices. However, he has a different perspective on the supply side of things, as well as the factors that may truly be at play in driving prices up.
For one, he said he doesn’t think ranchers are to blame for the small herd size.
“Speaking from a multi-generational ranching family, we’re not going to do something for the benefit of today if it kills tomorrow,” said Stephenson in response to a question asking whether ranchers are capitalizing on high cattle prices at the detriment of herd size.
He emphasized that ranchers don’t get to determine the price that they sell their cows for.
“We’re sort of beholden to the market, and the guys above us are beholden to the meat packers,” said Stephenson.
Instead, Stephenson points to drought and high input costs as the reason for reduced herd sizes. According to him, droughts in “key cattle states” forced ranchers to sell large portions of their herd. Stephenson also said many ranchers reduced their herd when feed prices went up in 2019 and 2020.
Regarding the price of beef, the feeling among local ranchers is that there may be more powerful factors at play than simple supply and demand.
According to Stephenson, imports from the international beef market used to play a major role in regulating the price of U.S. cattle. But starting during COVID, travel restrictions reduced the amount of imports to the U.S. market. These impacts have carried through into 2026 due to current tariffs on foreign countries and a ban on cattle imports from Mexico to prevent the spread of the New World screwworm.
This reliance on domestic cattle has spiked input costs across the beef industry, primarily impacting the big four meatpackers. Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef control up to 85% of the U.S. beef market.
This increased input cost, Stephenson said, is being passed on to “the person at the grocery store” by these powerful meatpacking corporations, driving prices to meet profit margins.
When Will Beef Prices Come Down?
According to Sumner, “nobody thinks the prices are going to come down anytime very soon.”
The good news though is that the issue of high demand and low supply could be leveling out.
Sumner said the demand for beef “just may be saturated,” in other words, it can’t get much bigger than this. If that’s the case, he says “that’ll give the supply side a chance to catch up.”
And Stephenson is hopeful that the supply will eventually reach a stable level once again.
“Nationally speaking, the American beef herd can rebuild. They’ve gone through these cycles over history from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s all the way through the 2000s. Numbers go up and numbers go down,” said Stephenson.
Record Searchlight reporter Jessica Skropanic contributed to this report.
Drew Askeland covers Redding and Shasta County government issues, as well as anything else that needs reporting for the Record Searchlight and USA Today Network. Reach him at [email protected] or (530) 225-8247. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Why do beef prices keep climbing? Experts explain the reasons.
Reporting by Drew Askeland, USA TODAY NETWORK / Redding Record Searchlight
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