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Red meat is having a moment. It's the OG protein at a time when America's protein obsession is peaking. MAHA influencers, avid gym-goers, and anyone trying to cool it with the processed foods are embracing steak, burgers, and roast beef with renewed enthusiasm. The federal government — particularly Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — put beef at the forefront of the country's revised dietary guidelines.
This accelerated appetite for beef is running into a big problem: the cost. Ground beef prices recently hit a record of $6.90 per pound, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and beef and veal prices are up nearly 15% from a year ago, far outpacing overall inflation. Data from the market research firm NIQ shows that Americans have spent $42.4 billion on beef over the past year, even as they bought less of it overall. That burger-dollar isn't going as far as it used to.
As grilling season approaches, many Americans are facing an uncomfortable reality at the meat counter: That roast or sirloin they want is going to cost a pretty penny, and there's no sign that will change anytime soon. America's cattle herd is severely depleted, and building it back up is a yearslong effort — ranchers can't grow a cow overnight, and many of them aren't sure they want to grow more cows at all. There's little relief to be had on the demand side as Americans' meat craze isn't abating.
"It's the most worn-out cliché ever, but the combination of factors that are driving these beef prices currently is the culmination of the perfect storm," says Don Close, a senior animal protein analyst at Terrain Ag, an agricultural research firm.
America wants more beef. American ranchers aren't convinced it's worth making.
To put things plainly, America doesn't have enough cows. There were 86.2 million cattle and calves in the US at the start of the year, according to the USDA, which is right around the lowest level in decades.
A long stretch of low cattle prices in the 2010s encouraged ranchers to reduce their herds, and ongoing droughts have meant there isn't enough grass for cattle to eat. Ranchers can buy feed to supplement, but that's gotten more expensive, too. And building up the next generation of cattle is a long process: Most calves are born in the spring and remain by their mother's side nursing and grazing until they're weaned six to nine months later. At that point, most male calves go to a feedlot to grow until they reach market weight, usually at about 18-20 months of age, maybe more. Ranchers have a decision to make about female calves: keep them for breeding to expand the herd, or send them off with the males. Given the hot market, many ranchers have made the calculation that it's better to sell the animals to slaughter and get paid a decent price for them while they can.
There's some long biology here that's pretty tough to beat.
Let's say a rancher has a heifer calf born this spring and decides to keep her. She won't have her first calf until the spring of 2028, and that calf has to grow for months until it becomes beef — which gets us to 2030.
"There's some long biology here that's pretty tough to beat," says David Anderson, an extension economist for livestock and food product marketing at Texas A&M.
Ranchers are also hesitant to start this multi-year cycle to grow their herds because of their own age. The average beef producer is around 63, explains Rich Nelson, a livestock market analyst at Allendale Inc., an agriculture research and brokerage firm. "They're preparing for retirement, and they have no interest in long-term expansion," he says.
Close puts the thought process succinctly: "Those guys are to a point of, 'Do I pay these kind of prices to buy replacements when I'm at an age I really don't want to be banging around with cows anymore?'"
Younger generations aren't exactly clamoring to get into the cattle ranching business, either. Startup costs are expensive, interest rates are high, and the payoff takes years to come to fruition— not to mention it's about as far from a cushy desk job as you can get.
Amanda Severson is one of the few younger people to buck the trend. The 32-year-old never thought she'd wind up in agriculture — now, she knows more about it and cattle ranching, specifically, than she ever imagined. She moved from Seattle to Iowa in 2017 to work on her husband's century-old family farm and start their own operation, Grand View Beef. They buy calves — usually from her husband's parents, who run a calf-cow operation — and finish grass-feeding them. Then, they have them processed and sell the meat directly to consumers. "When we started in 2017, we would pay around $1,000 for a 500-pound calf, and today that's more like $2,200 to $2,500," she says.
Grand View increased prices for its end product on May 1 — ground beef went from $12 per pound to $14, stew meat from $14 to $16 per pound, and sirloin from $24 to $28 per pound. When they started out selling in 2017, their ground beef was priced at $7 per pound, which Severson says was probably a little low. They were concerned that if they didn't up prices this spring, they'd start losing money. Most customers have been understanding. "Just shows how much people love beef," Severson says. They've worked to communicate with their customers about what's going on, and the couple is also trying to buffer themselves against market headwinds — toward the end of 2025, they bought some of their own cows to start a small herd. Today's market may be favorable, but there's uncertainty — they'll be paying off the loan they took out to start the herd for five to seven years.
"There was still this risk of like, well, if the cattle markets crash or even go down just a little bit, this could be a bad investment," she says. "Obviously now, looking at what happened, we're glad we did."
Bill Smith, managing editor of the red meat division at Expana, a market intelligence firm and price reporting agency, tells me typical cattle herd cycles run on a 10-year cycle of expansion and contraction. That means replenishing the country's herds to more normal levels of, say, 90-95 million cattle, would be a hefty task, but not an impossible one. The issue, however, is that "we're still liquidating these animals," he says, meaning killing more cattle than keeping and growing new ones.
"The ranching industry is kind of a head scratcher," Severson says. "It's going to take us so long to make that money back."
The supply crunch is landing at a moment when demand for beef is exploding, thanks to the cultural shift toward protein-heavy diets and the MAHA movement. Some of the negativity surrounding beef in recent decades — health, environmental, and animal rights concerns — isn't generating headlines the way it used to, though those issues haven't gone away. Many beef alternatives, such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, haven't really taken hold.
Seventy-seven percent of shoppers say that meat and poultry are part of a healthy diet, according to a survey from food industry group FMI and lobbying group the Meat Institute, and 45% of shoppers are actively trying to make more meals with meat and poultry. Whether you're a GLP-1 user, a looksmaxxer, or a perimenopausal mom, chances are, you're thinking about your protein intake. The focus on meat is also getting some government support. The new White House dietary guidelines rolled out by HHS Secretary RFK Jr. put red meat front and center. Politics aside, it's a sign of the times: beef is back.
The quality of American beef has improved significantly as of late — producers have increased the marbling in their products to better align with consumer palates. The vast majority of graded US beef reaches the USDA's top two quality tiers. The across-the-board quality helps keep price-conscious consumers from looking for other protein sources— they may not get the fanciest beef for dinner, but they're not scrapping it entirely.
"They may be trading down the beef ladder so that they're willing to trade out some of the expensive steak cuts for lower-priced items, but they're not yet fully trading out of beef to either pork or poultry," Close says.
"The people who are still buying beef are beef loyalists," says Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University.
Indeed, data from NIQ shows that annual beef spending in the US has increased by nearly $10 billion over the past five years. However, people seem to be buying moderately less beef overall, and they're seeking out deals and buying in larger pack sizes to try to save money. Chris Costagli, vice president of food insights at NIQ, tells me about a quarter of consumers say they're stretching their meat-based meals with pasta, beans, and rice, and about one-fifth say they're eating more meatless meals.
But when consumers are shopping for beef — or anything, for that matter — they're scrutinizing packaging. This is a place where meat, depending on how it's produced, may have an advantage: Producers and manufacturers aren't adding a bunch of weird, unpronounceable ingredients to ground beef. If they adhere to certain consumer standards around animal welfare, hormones, and antibiotics, it appeals to buyers.
"When they see meat products that make those sorts of claims that are valuable to them, they're actually willing to spend more money in that department on those products because they have a claim that in their mind justifies the spend," Costagli says.
Rosangela Teodoro, the owner of Teodora's Boucherie Gourmande, a craft butchery in Massachusetts, tries to educate her customers on which meats work best for which meals and encourages creativity — not everything has to be the best cut. "The cattle has a lot of muscles," she says. She also uses concerns about processed food to her advantage. "Meat is the real protein," she says, whereas many trendy snacks promoting their protein content are gimmicky. "Popcorn that's made out of whey, it's not protein."
Over and over, I asked analysts, economists, and ranchers when this beef debacle gets fixed, and the answer was that no one really knows. We're stuck in this situation "indefinitely," Volpe says. "This industry is challenging."
The Trump administration has made some efforts to bring about relief. The president recently announced he would suspend tariffs on beef imports, though that plan is now in limbo after complaints from cattle ranchers and some Republican lawmakers. It's also trying to increase loans and access to capital for ranchers and reduce protections for wolves that ranchers say prey on their herds. None of those measures, whether they come to pass or not, will be hugely or immediately impactful.
The people who are still buying beef are beef loyalists.
"Directionally, with a lower tariff, we would import more, add some supply. So directionally, you could argue some lower price, but we're already importing record amounts of beef," Anderson says.
It's a similar story on meatpackers, which have been under scrutiny by the Justice Department in both Democratic and Republican administrations over anticompetitive behavior. There are plenty of problems with the meatpacking industry and its concentration — just four companies control about 85% of the market — but going after them won't solve the current conundrum.
"They don't control the weather, and they don't control interest rates and costs," Anderson says.
There's not one single entity that does, which isn't ideal for anyone in this picture. High prices are supposed to encourage more production, but in cattle, where expansion takes years and risks are enormous, the calculation is far from simple.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
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