As Beef Prices Skyrocket, Ranchers Raise $300m to Fight Gov’t-Corporate Control, Create a Sustainable System

Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist

If you’ve been to the grocery store in 2021, you’ve likely noticed that all grocery prices have skyrocketed while portion sizes have declined. While much of this is due to the government stealing value from the dollar by printing money to finance their blunders — also known as taxation through inflation — beef prices have shot up far higher than most everything else thanks to the industry’s government-enabled monopoly.

Since bribery is legal in politics so long as it’s referred to as “lobbying,” over the past several decades, a few large companies have paid their political puppets to ram through legislation that has made barriers to entry and regulatory compliance nearly impossible for smaller businesses.

Thanks to this government-corporate collusion, today, just four companies now control more than half of the market in chicken processing (Tyson, JBS, Perdue, and Sanderson), close to 70 percent in pork (Smithfield, JBS, Tyson, and Hormel), and 80 percent in beef (JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef), according to one recent analysis.

Over the last few decades, as farmers sold their beef to these companies at stagnant prices, they have become upset after watching prices in the store rise while JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef pay them the same or lower prices.

In a recent article from the AP, they reported that Federal data show that for every dollar spent on food, the share that went to ranchers and farmers dropped from 35 cents in the 1970s to 14 cents recently.

Naturally, farmers are upset and now, they are doing something about it.

Rusty Kemp, a cattle rancher in Nebraska, organized a movement to help other ranchers like himself break free from the corporatocracy’s grip over the industry. In an inspiring show of gumption, the group raised over $300,000,000.

“We’ve been complaining about it for 30 years,” Kemp said. “It’s probably time somebody does something about it.”

The funds raised will be used to create a new more sustainable system that functions outside of the corrupt government-maintained monopoly.

According to the AP:

Crews will start work this fall building the Sustainable Beef plant on nearly 400 acres near North Platte, Nebraska, and other groups are making similar surprising moves in Iowa, Idaho and Wisconsin. The enterprises will test whether it’s really possible to compete financially against an industry trend that has swept through American agriculture and that played a role in meat shortages during the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead of selling their cattle to the beef monopoly, this new independently financed model seeks to create a better environment at all levels throughout the process.

“Cattle people are risk takers and they’re ready to take a risk,” David Briggs, the CEO of Sustainable Beef told the AP of the inherent risks involved in such a venture.

True innovation and progress only comes through risk. It is the risk takers who propel society forward as those who seek to prevent progress and innovation lean on the government to regulate away their risk.

This is where the beef industry finds itself today. While this new venture won’t come close to overrunning the current monolithic industry, it will show that a better more sustainable system is possible.

What’s more, as the AP reports, “they will have important advantages, including more modern equipment and, they hope, less employee turnover thanks to slightly higher pay of more than $50,000 annually plus benefits along with more favorable work schedules. The new Midwest plants are also counting on closer relationships with ranchers, encouraging them to invest in the plants, to share in the profits.”

As so many people in America today attempt to incite change through destroying, it is those willing to take risks by creating, who will usher in a better, more sustainable, and freer world.

Free Thought Project