Beef price liberalization will be a slow and painful process for US consumers

It will take some time before consumers see any relief when it comes to beef prices.

Prices have peaked and are expected to soften, but there is no major pressure on them right now, Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute chief agricultural economist Michael Swanson told FOX Business.

The US should have more cattle available by 2026, but buyers are still turning to international suppliers to meet their needs, Swanson said. If buyers are still importing, then domestic supply is still tight and prices will remain high.

“It’s going to be a slow and painful process for the consumer,” Swanson told FOX Business, explaining the complex market forces that need to change for prices to come down.

Beef costs have been a major pain for consumers for years, with beef prices set to peak in 2024 due to a combination of deteriorating pasture conditions, inflation and stockpiling of cattle, according to the Farm Bureau.

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The price of beef rose sharply in September, outperforming every food category in the Labor Department’s consumer price index. Food prices increased by 3.1% year-on-year, while beef and veal prices increased by 14.7%.

Problems persist in the industry, according to Farm Bureau economist Bernt Nelson, who wrote in a blog post last week that the Department of Agriculture’s “Eating Cows” report highlights the continued tightening of cattle supplies.

There were 11.7 million cattle fed in the US on November 1, down about 2% from 2024 and the lowest number of cattle fed in the month of November since 2018. The report also estimated that 2.04 million cattle were placed on feedlots, down nearly 10% from last year and marking the lowest number of cattle in cattle feed history.

The small number of cows placed on feed, which is beef sold in the store, shows the strength of the cows that feed.

Beef cattle on a farm in Sonoita, Arizona, Nov. 11, 2025. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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There are also several players in the beef supply chain – cattle producers, meat packers and wholesalers and retailers – who want to protect their margins. Since no one in that supply chain wants to accept lower profits, it becomes difficult to lower consumer costs, Swanson told FOX Business.

That competition will ultimately drive down beef prices.

“The players in this industry don’t want to give up what they have right now. So it will be a competition that forces prices,” he said, adding that “It’s never a straight line.”

Signs of that change are already emerging. Swanson said the industry is likely to change dramatically following Tyson’s announcement last month that it will permanently close a major beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, in January 2026 and that it is reducing operations at its beef plant in Texas instead.

Packages of meat are seen in a supermarket in Houston, Texas. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Immediately after its announcement, live cattle prices dropped dramatically. Although prices have fallen slightly, they are still below recent highs, according to Swanson.

That move “immediately sent a big signal to the market that they were going to bid less for live cattle,” according to Swanson.

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He said meat processors could not continue to lose money and “Tyson just proved that they are willing to do something tough about it.”

He believes that cattle prices will start to decline, and that seeing a 10% drop, as happened in 2014, is “out of the realm” of what could happen in the next year and a half.

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“If the cow goes down, the price of the cow goes down, yes, the price of the cow will go down,” he said. “But when will it happen? Not immediately. So the consumer will be frustrated and will not see immediate relief.”