Navigating Natural Friday Edition
If you are having trouble reading this email, read the online version | | Where's the beef? Shrinking herds and soaring demands challenge regenerative meat As U.S. cattle herds shrink to historic lows while demand rises, regenerative beef producers look overseas to balance sustainability with affordability. | | | Douglas Brown, Senior Retail Reporter |
| | He's been in the cattle business for nearly two decades, with the last few years serving as co-chief executive officer for Land to Market, a prominent regenerative agriculture certification regime that advocates vigorously for integrating livestock onto farming acreage.
But last year Chris Kerston left Land to Market to launch Origin Provisions, a company specializing in regenerative beef products. Instead of just evangelizing on behalf of regenerative agriculture and beef, he wanted to more directly contribute toward getting steaks on people's tables.
He and his partners nailed the timing. Demand for beef is surging—in 2024, sales reached $40 billion, a nearly 10% gain from the previous year according to the Food Industry Association and The Meat Institute. That number eclipses demand for meat overall, which reached 4.7% last year.
Experts at the USDA anticipate the net beef import deficit hitting 1.8 billion pounds in 2025, the largest disparity between imports and exports since 2006, when Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the U.S. herd impacted exports.
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Where's the beef, continued... |
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| | The vanishing domestic cattle herd can be tied, in part, to the boosted prices for beef everybody encounters in grocery stores and for restaurant burgers. Those lofty margins are compelling ranchers to sell off their cows for meat, rather than holding them back for breeding. The rationale, according to Kerston: Why wait for years to sell beef cattle when you can get inflated windfalls right now?
Regenerative ranchers may be more eager to sell off their cows than conventional ranchers. Raising cattle the regenerative way requires longer timelines than conventional ranching—it can take four to five years to get an animal ready for market. And it also demands more labor-intensive methods. For regenerative ranchers, the lure of selling off now tantalizes with even more urgency.
The result? The U.S. is losing its beef breeding stock. Kerston says if the trend were to reverse today, it could take three years or more to grow it back to a healthy breeding herd. But with sky-high prices, he thinks the great thinning of the cows will continue.
As ranchers sell those cows and prices keep vaulting up, Kerston says "you've got all of the makings of a bubble."
"Everybody wants regen," he says. "But nobody wants to foot the bill."
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