Beef Is High Compared to What?
Mike Domel
Everyone wants to talk about how expensive beef has gotten.
But expensive compared to what?
If you want the real reason why beef prices are high-and why they’re not coming back down anytime soon, you have to look past the easy talking points.
This isn’t just inflation. And it’s not just packers. or grocery stores.
It’s land, water, policy, and who still gets to use rural Texas.
The Land Problem No One Wants to Admit
Texas isn’t running out of cows by accident.
We’re running out of working ranch land.
Urban sprawl keeps chewing up acreage that once supported cattle. Ranches get sold, split into smaller tracts, and converted into “recreational” land. Cows disappear, fences come down, and cedars grow unchecked.
Once land leaves agriculture, it almost never comes back.
And that matters, because cattle don’t live in spreadsheets, they live on acres.
Wildlife Use & CRP: Good Intentions, Real Consequences
Conservation programs like wildlife use exemptions and CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) were sold by politicians as environmental wins. In theory, they protect land and water. In practice, they’ve done something else too:
They’ve removed cattle from the landscape.
Landowners can qualify for wildlife use with minimal oversight. Throw a bird house up on a tree, put a brush pile in the corner of the lot and that’s all it takes. Many don’t actively manage habitat. Cedars spread. Grazing disappears. Carrying capacity drops.
Here in Bosque county, we run about one cow to about 20 acres — and even that number keeps falling.
The hard truth:
You don’t rebuild cattle numbers while incentivizing people not to run cattle.
“Cheap Beef” Isn’t Coming Back — Not Like This
The only way we ever see truly cheap cattle again is if something major changes:
Wildlife use rules get tightened
Conservation programs require active grazing
Or wildlife exemptions mandate a minimum percentage of cattle
Without that, numbers won’t rebound. And without numbers, prices stay high.
There’s no mystery here. Supply matters.
Yes, Consolidation Matters — But It’s Not the Root Cause
Packers consolidating.
Big grocery chains controlling pricing.
Equipment costs exploding.
All of that is real.
But blaming those alone misses the bigger issue: you can’t process cattle that don’t exist.
Tax incentives get handed out to “support agriculture,” but much of that money flows straight through farmers into equipment manufacturers and suppliers. It circulates — but it doesn’t fix the core problem of shrinking land access.
Perspective From the 1970s
In the 1970s, Mike could sell a 16-foot load of cattle and buy a new pickup for around $2,700.
Back then, land was affordable, ranching families stayed on the land, and cattle numbers were strong. Today, equipment costs have skyrocketed, land prices are inflated beyond agricultural value, and ranching margins are razor thin.
Beef didn’t suddenly get expensive.
Everything around beef did.
Generational Change Is Accelerating the Problem
When Mike started, the average customer was 65.
Add 40 years to today - almost all of them are gone.
Their kids often left for Dallas–Fort Worth to make money. Some came back later out of love for their land. But the next generation? They were raised in the Metroplex. When they inherit those places, many will sell - fast.
And who can afford them?
Not working cattlemen.
It’s urban money buying rural land — not to ranch, but to hold, hunt, or subdivide.
That’s how you lose cattle country permanently.
Water, Fire, and the Next Crisis
What’s coming next isn’t theoretical.
Water shortages are real.
Fire risk across Texas is growing.
Poorly managed land fuels both.
When cattle leave, active land management often leaves with them. Grazing isn’t the enemy-unmanaged brush is. The next major fire season will expose that reality fast.
So What Do We Do?
If Texans want affordable beef, strong rural economies, and resilient land:
Wildlife programs must require real management
Grazing must be part of conservation, not excluded from it
Land policy has to favor production, not just possession
This won’t be fixed quietly or politely.
It requires pressure - above the heads of politicians-and a statewide conversation that reaches every metro area.