WASHINGTON \u2014 The Texas agriculture commissioner and the Independent Cattlemen\u2019s Association of Texas are among those who have come out against President Donald Trump\u2019s plan to lower the price of beef. They said his plan to import 300,000 tons of ground beef undercuts ranchers in Texas and across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anthony Thomas has ranched and raised cattle all his life. His farm-to-table beef business is entering its seventh year in the Houston area, and last week he sold more beef than ever. By now, Thomas said he knows all about the demand for beef.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only so much burger and so much fajita per animal that we have in the United States, so there is some trim that needs to come from other countries in order to keep up with the demand that we have here,\u201d Thomas told Spectrum News.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Trump announced that the U.S. would allow imports of up to 300,000 tons of ground beef without out-of-quota tariffs, Thomas immediately had concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a fix for the cattle industry. This is a Band-Aid, and I think it\u2019s just a bit of a smokescreen,\u201d Thomas said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The average price of a pound of 100% ground beef was $6.85 last month, according to the federal government, a more than 50% jump from five years ago.<\/p>\n
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, a native Texan, told Spectrum News she did not know from which countries the beef would be imported but addressed affordability concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of ground beef that\u2019s sitting in other countries that would potentially help serve Americans, especially lower-income Americans who really lean into the lean ground beef. And so this is a very short-term fix from the president\u2019s perspective, that he believed necessary to get lower-cost beef onto American plates,\u201d Rollins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Texas is the top cattle-producing state in the United States, holding over 12 million head of cattle. But nationally, the domestic cattle herd sits at a 75-year low.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is very short-term focused. I think it\u2019s unclear how much real impact on prices there would be,\u201d said David Anderson, a professor and extension economist at Texas A&M University.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we really need is for ranchers, cattle producers, to have the ability to expand their herds,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anderson said expanding the herd is what would drive them down long-term. But he said across the country, there has been severe drought.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re in a drought, you don\u2019t produce enough grass. There\u2019s nothing for the cattle to eat, and that becomes the constraining factor to growth. Even though the market\u2019s telling us to expand, the weather\u2019s not letting us,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cIt\u2019s really time for ranchers to expand to take that young calf. She grows up and becomes a cow, starts having calves herself, and that becomes beef production in the future. That\u2019s how we grow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thomas said consumers have to balance the cost of beef with the value of supporting American ranchers and the quality of the products they\u2019re buying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstand that we\u2019re in a huge drought. Ranchers need help when there is no grass so that they can feed their livestock. I think the packers should be limited on how much beef, if any beef, should be exported out of this country. I think we should feed Americans first, and I think Americans just need thorough education and knowledge of where their food actually comes from,\u201d Thomas said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because for ranchers raising cattle, the question is not just what beef costs today, but whether they can keep up with the demand in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The Texas agriculture commissioner and the Independent Cattlemen\u2019s Association of Texas are among those who have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6329,1657,1658,3645,132,6328,1570,102,223,287,91318,82,27,29,28,835],"class_list":["post-418987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-national-politics","tag-austin","tag-capital-tonight","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-reena-diamante","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}