Beef Is More Than a Business, It’s a Passion.

This Week In Ag #117

Few professions capture our imagination like ranching. There’s an undeniable romanticism attached to cowboy culture. Taylor Sheridan has made a career depicting it. And let’s be real, they don’t make movies or write songs about pork and poultry producers.

Western lifestyle is at a fever pitch. Brands like Ariat and Wrangler are thriving. And so is the cattle industry. Beef prices are enjoying record highs. And when it comes to producing beef, nobody does it better than the American cowboy.

US cattlemen produce over 21% of the world’s beef supply – 28 billion pounds annually – ranking #1 in the world. Yet they do it with just 6% of the world’s cattle herd.

Beef is more than a business, it’s a passion. You see it in show rings and rodeos, pastures and paddocks, on hobby farms and feedlots. Both my wife and I raised cattle, with her showing them, and like so many of us, we’re cowboys and cowgirls for life.

As we continue to celebrate #NationalBeefMonth and the start of summer grilling season, let’s recognize America’s favorite food, the hamburger. Americans consume 50 billion burgers annually. That amounts to each person eating 151 hamburgers each year.

America’s favorite burger topping? That would be cheese, preferred by 74% of connoisseurs, followed by ketchup at 65%. But honestly, have you ever been to a cookout and witnessed 1/3 of the guests not put ketchup on their burger?

Beef is even more popular with grain and hay farmers. The largest market for corn is animal feed. You won’t be surprised that the largest species consumes the most.

Cows, inherently, are inefficient animals. While poultry and pigs require 2-4 pounds of feed per pound of weight gain, cattle require 7 pounds or more. That means they eat lots of forages and grain.

Beef cattle consume more than 1.5 billion bushels of corn annually, over 10% of all corn produced in the USA. Most of that corn is eaten in feedlots by cattle over 500 pounds, and they are fed until processed at about 1,200 pounds. A feedlot steer can consume about 10-20 pounds of corn per day, depending on its size.

But beef cows aren’t just an output, they are also a valuable crop input. Cattle can play a critical role in carbon capture and soil health. Many regenerative agriculture systems rely on rotational cattle grazing to recycle nutrients, in the form of manure, while stomping hooves aerate the soil.