This episode features an insightful discussion on the current state of the beef industry, highlighting the significant rise in cattle prices driven by low supply and strong consumer demand. Hosts Jay Matteson and Ron Robbins welcome Dr. Travis Maddock, founder of Dakota Global Consulting, LLC., who shares his expertise on livestock production and market trends. The conversation delves into the challenges faced by beef and dairy farmers, including an aging producer population and the impact of agricultural policies. Listeners gain valuable perspectives on the interplay between beef on dairy practices and the evolving market dynamics. The episode culminates in a look at how tariffs and trade negotiations could affect the industry moving forward, emphasizing the resilience and adaptability of the beef sector amid economic fluctuations.

Jay Matteson hosts an engaging conversation about the current state of rural America, particularly focusing on agriculture and the beef industry. The episode opens with Matteson introducing his co-host, Ron Robbins, and their special guest, Dr. Travis Maddock, a seasoned consultant in livestock production. The trio discusses the significant fluctuations in weather patterns affecting farming practices, particularly in northern regions, where extreme temperatures and snow conditions are prevalent. They also touch on the societal shifts influencing young people's decisions to enter the agricultural sector, noting a trend of older generations retiring without successors ready to take over their farms. This discussion leads to an exploration of the challenges facing the beef industry, including supply chain issues stemming from historic droughts and low breeding cattle numbers. Maddock emphasizes the need for younger farmers to adapt and innovate rather than just replicate traditional practices, suggesting that integrating additional revenue streams, such as agritourism or direct-to-consumer sales, can create a more sustainable business model.

As the conversation progresses, the podcast delves into consumer behavior regarding beef prices, highlighting the surprising resilience of demand despite rising costs in supermarkets. Matteson shares personal anecdotes about the steep prices of steak, prompting Maddock to analyze the factors behind these increases, including reduced cattle supply and strong consumer demand. The trio discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cattle farming, mentioning how it has shifted the dynamics of the market. Maddock notes that while current prices are high, the stability of the beef market relies heavily on maintaining a balance between supply and demand. They also examine the implications of tariffs and trade policies under the current political climate, expressing cautious optimism about how these factors will shape the future of farming and beef production.

The podcast concludes with a reflective dialogue on the evolving agricultural landscape and the importance of adapting to new market realities. Maddock reassures listeners that despite challenges, there are still opportunities in the beef industry for those willing to innovate and work hard. He encourages young farmers to consider diverse strategies for profitability and emphasizes the value of beef as a nutritious and desirable food product. This episode is a rich tapestry of insights, practical advice, and an exploration of the complexities of rural life, leaving listeners with a deeper understanding of the issues and opportunities in agriculture today.

Takeaways:

• The beef industry is currently seeing record high prices due to low supply and strong demand.
• Young farmers may face challenges in entering beef production due to high initial costs and long ROI periods.
• Dairy farmers are increasingly breeding Holsteins with Angus to improve calf quality and meet beef demand.
• Consumer demand for beef remains strong despite rising prices, especially in the restaurant sector.
• Weather conditions and climate impact livestock operations, particularly in northern regions experiencing extreme temperatures.
• Agriculture trade dynamics are complicated, often influenced by broader trade negotiations and tariffs.

Links referenced in this episode:

• www.agricultureevents.com
• jcida.com
• https://www.dakotaglobal.com/

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Dakota Global Consulting
• Jefferson County Economic Development
• McDonald's
• Texas Roadhouse
• Longhorn Steakhouse
• Outback Steakhouse
• Costco

Mentioned in this episode:

Jefferson County Economic Development

Welcome to Jay Madison's Rural America. It's a journey through the stories impacting rural economies and country lifestyles.

Jay Madison's Rural America is also a production of Jefferson County Economic Development. Now here's Jay.

Yes. And that is me. I am Jay Madison. I am your host for this podcast along with Mr. Ron Robbins, who actually is in northern New York.

But he was, he would not come to the office to help me record the podcast today because I'm dealing with a little bug and he's a little bug shy, I guess, you know. Come on, Ron, what the heck?

Yeah, well, you know, I didn't want you, I didn't want to catch your germs there. Coming out of Lorraine, southern Jefferson county.

We'Ve got some, we've got some interesting bugs up there on the tug hill. Yeah, they're green and they don't have teeth. We'll just leave it.

Yeah.

So. So, Ron, we've got a special guest. We've had him on the show before with us. Ms. Or I should say Dr. Travis Matic is joining us.

He is the founder and owner of Dakota Global Consulting. He's tons and tons of practical experience in livestock production and food and feed manufacturing.

He actually has traveled here to Watertown, New York to serve as a consultant for us before on some livestock processing projects. And Travis, we are very excited to have you back on the show. Welcome, sir.

Well, not as excited as I am to be here.

Now, you are talking to us from up in North Dakota. So, you know, is, it's probably a little colder up there today than it is here. I think maybe, you know, we're, we're.

Near 40 degrees today. We are experiencing a little bit of a heat wave. There's, I know Grand Forks was talking about maybe even touching the record high today.

I, it's a weird day. The sun's shining, the wind is blowing about 50.

Wow.

The road, roads are tough because, you know, the, they were, they're warming up and the, the snow is sticking to them. But all in all, it's not a bad day. If you're in the yard and you're out of the wind, it's, it's pretty darn nice.

Wow.

But once you get out, get out on the road, you, you certainly are like, okay, the wind can die down. But yeah, we're, we've been up and down.

I tell you what, on Monday, a week ago yesterday, James and I, my son, we went out to do chores at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. It was still 18 below zero.

Right.

Payloader wouldn't start, John Deere wouldn't start.

We had to go, we had to go boost the old case with that 5, 9 Cummings in it and that by God, it started and we ended up doing chores with that very slowly, but we, we carried buckets of grain and got bales rolled out for everything. We couldn't get the processor started, we couldn't get anything to work.

But yeah, we've been, we've had one of those winters where we've been up and down. It's been warm and then cold and then warm and then cold.

We started off a little bit on the warm side, but man, then it took a nosedive and we haven't, we haven't climbed up out of it since. Not, we haven't been that cold. That's, that's brutal cold. But we've, we've been down below zero and we've been getting plenty of snow.

Wouldn't you agree, Ron?

Yeah, it's been somewhat of an old fashioned winter and you know, we were pretty open over the holiday season and then January hit and in this cold is dipped. I mean I've spent three weeks in Florida and there was, you know, highs in the 50s, a good portion of those three weeks that I was down there.

And of course we all know how northern Florida, northern half of Florida, the Panhandle over into Alabama and New Orleans and East Texas had a lot of snow.

Yeah. So it's, it's been a, an old fashioned winter here. An old fashioned winter.

A lot of snow for you guys is, you know, like the same thing. Like you say, oh, it's, we get really cold. You have a lot of snow. You know, we get 30 more, you get 50 inches of snow.

You know, so a lot of snow for us is just dusting for you. You know, a little cold for you is, is really cold for you is just like a normal day for us. So it's, you know, it's all relative.

Right.

I was coming back from, from Watertown down to Syracuse to fly out one time and, and I, I looked at Rob, I said, I've never seen a snow this hard in my life. That lake effect snow is the damnedest thing. I was like, and I'm from north Central North Dakota. So. Yeah, it just depends on where you're from. So.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, hey, let's talk a little bit about agriculture and food and especially the beef industry. There is a lot going on out there. You, you know, we're seeing prices. I was talking to somebody earlier today.

We're seeing prices in the supermarket for one steak. And I'm. I'm not talking the good stuff.

I'm talking what I'm buying at the regular old supermarket, and it's costing me 20, 30 bucks for a stinking steak.

Yeah, I know. It's about time.

I could answer. Good answer. So, Travis, what's going on out there? Man, It's.

It looks like prices are doing really well for beef farmers, and dairy farmers can't keep their. Their calves in stock because they're. They're breeding them off for beef. And it's just been crazy.

You know, we're.

We're just gone through a period, you know, record low breeding cattle numbers, you know, drought and attrition and, you know, tough market conditions. And I mean, hey, we could spend hours talking about all the factors that go into go what, you know, causes a rancher to retain breeding heifers or.

Or sell out. And we just had a lot of conditions there for a number of years where it's not.

Their profitability was awful, but there were other opportunities that I think a lot of farmers took advantage of and they just weren't reinvesting, you know, back into their. Their beef breeding herds. And so you exacerbate all of that with the COVID pandemic.

And we've come out of the back end of this, and we just don't have a lot of cattle in the. In the supply chain right now. And so we're bidding the, you know, the feedlots are bidding those feeder calves up.

If you are in the cow business and you've got feeder calves to sell, or are you background in feeder. Yeah, we were seeing prices. They're not just record prices. We blew by records a while ago.

We are significantly above what we would consider to be, you know, traditionally record high prices. We went past that several months ago. And I don't know if there's an end in sight. There will be. Of course, there's always a reckoning for everything.

But right now, I tell you what, it's a good time if you've got cattle for sale.

So, you know, I try to, you know, especially spending a lot of time in Florida, which is a big cow calf state, of course. And, you know, one observation I've kind of made, and I.

I guess down there especially maybe you've seen this, you talked about attrition and some other things, but kind of the legacy cow calf producer seems like has become somewhat of an aging population, you know, that. That generation is retiring out, and there's really Nobody to replace them. There's other uses for their land.

Are you seeing that all around the country? And is that part of the impact then?

I think so.

You know, I would say in North Dakota anyway, I'll say the northern plains, we're seeing that there's not a lot of young people that have a lot of passion for going into the beef industry there. And once again, there's a number of factors. I would say there's societal factors that come into play. I mean, we're. We don't work. We.

I don't want to say we don't work as hard as we used to because that's, that's not right. We work differently than we used to. We have a different set of work ethics, let's say.

And you know, my grandfather thought nothing of getting up at, you know, the crack of dawn and working until the sun went down all day, every day. And nowadays, kids, you know, we, we've got a little different expectation of what our life's going to look like.

And being in the dairy business, being in the beef cattle business, being in the livestock business, you got a responsibility every single day to those animals.

Whereas, and I would say, like in my part of the world, a lot of these young people look at farming versus livestock ranching or livestock farming, and they go, well, I can farm. I can work really hard in the spring, do my spraying in the summer and get my harvest off. And then I have the opportunity to take a breath.

I can work on my equipment in the shop for a while, or I can, you know, I have some downtime. And I think they look at the livestock businesses, well, that's always on the present, it's always there. We're always have that responsibility.

Whereas with grain farming, that's it, it's a little less. And the other side of this is, of course, is how. And I'm going to get in trouble here.

But just the cheap food policy of this country has really incentivized farming and basically row crop farming, corn and beans. You know, when I was a kid in north central North Dakota, there were no corn and beans.

And the thought that we would be a corn and Bean county in Benson county, what made everybody laugh. And there's a corn in Bean county. Now, that's predominantly what we raise.

The government subsidies, the crop insurance, everything is set up to put such strong safety nets.

And I'm not deriding the safety nets, but I'm saying that it really incentivizes folks to say, you know what, I'm going to Take that piece of ground and instead of running cattle on it or raising silage on it or raising a feedstock on it, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to run that through a corn and bean rotation, and that's going to, you know, I'm going to have a lot less risk involved with that. So I think those things all kind of together have, yeah, have, have. Have driven some, you know, a lot of ranchers out of business.

So, you know, and yet you really, you think about. I was just at a conference in Florida and there was producers there from around the country, and, you know, a few had livestock.

But, you know, the, the Corn Belt farmers, the corn and bean guys, you know, we got talking about that and how, you know, they, they say to us, livestock guys, boy, you know, I don't know how you guys do it. You know, you're kind of crazy maybe, you know, having that responsibility 247 to take care of animals.

But you look back 20 years prior and beyond going back, you know, I think you're right.

Corn and bean guys, even in the Midwest corn Belt area, they still needed some livestock on the farm to really round out their, you know, their income. And, you know, you just don't see that today. I mean, the vast majority of the. You go to Iowa and the beef feedlots are empty. They're falling down.

And you know, the small feedlots on those farms and, you know, the cow calf guys, and they're all, they're all not there anymore.

Well, I think, you know, the feedlots back in those days, Ron, those. That was a risk management tool, you know, though, that, you know, that that's how they used it.

They're like, well, if my price of corn goes down, I'll run them through. I'll run the corn through some cattle. And once again, though, and I'll point back to.

I mean, we've taken a lot of that risk out of those row crops to the point where they don't need that anymore. You know, they can, they can buy all types of different.

There's all types of different insurance vehicles out there that farmers can use to mitigate risk, and they've gotten pretty darn good at it. So now it's no longer. They no longer have to worry about, well, you know what?

I better have an opportunity to run, run some of these feeds through some livestock because they can mitigate risk in other ways. So, and we are where we're at. You know, it's.

The number of cows is starting to claw Back, I think, although I just saw a report a couple days ago out of cattle facts, and they say, yeah, we're not really seeing a lot of heifer retention yet. If you're looking at heifer kills, kill rates, and as a percentage of. We're not seeing that.

We're not now, but up here, you know, knowing all the farmers and ranchers that I do, everybody around here is starting to keep some heifers. They're starting to look at building their herd a little bit, taking advantage of these higher price points.

And at the, you know, at the same time, you have this low supply. Demand has been pretty strong from the consumer side, has it not?

It has, in fact, all the demand metrics. We are. We got the highest demand for beef in the US that we've had since the mid-80s, not consumption now.

And we, you know, don't confuse consumption with demand, but demand metrics, price versus volume, and add in exports and things like that, Our demand is as high as it's ever been. The consumer is still buying. Buying beef in spite of the fact that, you know, prices is pretty darn high.

So now the price of box beef over the past couple.

I'll say a couple of weeks, but over the past six weeks, let's say, has gotten to the point now where I personally am starting to think there's got to be a ceiling here somewhere. Jay just alluded to. I just. We just walked through Costco the other day in Bismarck and, you know, tenderloin, just a tenderloin was 36 bucks a pound.

And I took a picture of it because I'm just like, holy. How much can the consumer bear before they go, all right, I'll just have a pork loin or I'll, you know, I'll buy some chicken or.

Or I'll just eat this, you know, eat something else.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah. No, no. At some point, there is a ceiling there where the consumer just can't bear, you know, Can't. Can't bear that price point anymore.

Yeah. And that's, you know, that's what I'm wondering is where is that that breaking point where all of a sudden, consumers shut down on.

And that'll bring the prices, you know, crashing down, which is not what we want. We, you know, we want to see prices, you know, stay.

I don't think you'll. I don't think you'll see prices crashing down. You know, I don't think you'll see a big flip.

What will happen is you will bump up that ceiling A little bit. And you'll see, you know, and of course, the, the retailers and the, and the, the hotel restaurant folks, they'll start pushing back on price.

They'll start moving into other protein alternatives, whether it be, you know, pork or poultry or whatever. And then you'll start seeing, you know, those prices will start to reel back a little bit.

But once again, to Ron's point earlier, I mean, we've done a really good job in the beef industry of positioning beef as a real value proposition all the way up to, you know, you know, to the price points we're at right now. Consumers still look at beef and say that's a good deal because they know that it's the most nutrient packed product out there.

They know it's the healthiest product for them to eat. It tastes great. I mean, it's, it's just, it is the value proposition in the food case and consumers are starting to understand that.

So now let's talk a little bit about, not to interrupt you, Jay, ears there, but beef on dairy, kind of that and that for those listeners that don't know what we're talking about.

I know we've talked about it in the past on the podcast, but basically breeding a Holstein dairy cow to a Black Angus and having that, that Holstein cow drop a black calf that then goes into the, the bee sector. Talk about that a little bit. And you know, that phenomenon and how that's impacting things.

Well, honestly, I think what we're finding out, Ron, is that it was probably the perfect time for the dairy industry to start working on that.

Now I know there's a lot of beef producers that have concerns about beef on dairy, but if you were going to do it, do it when we have record low numbers like this and we are scrounging around looking for, for feeder calves and, and fat cattle to get into the, into the supply chain.

You know, there, there's a perception, I think that those animals are going to be a lower quality or a not necessarily not quality grade, but a lower yielding, less attractive option.

But I think what we're finding is that most of the folks that are doing it are doing a pretty good job of matching up their genetics, are doing a pretty good job of breeding to the right bulls. And you know, the product coming out is, is working for the most part now.

It's, it's, you know, and some of it can be, you know, choice and prime product. You know, dairy, dairy's the Holstein. Holstein has always been the number one beef breed in the country anyway.

You Know, but most people probably don't realize that, but it has been for a long, long time.

And by putting beef on there, we're just producing a product that probably feeds a little bit better, is a little more efficient in the feedlot, and then at the end of the day, the consumer is going to say, yeah, this looks like a ribeye steak and it tastes like a rib eye steak. So I guess I think that's just part of the natural evolution of our beef industry.

Well, it sure, you know, it sure had a, you know, somewhat positive impact on the dairy sector, both from cash flow standpoint, but also in keeping heifer replacements lower, which is, you know, kind of put the reins on dairy expansion.

And, you know, we're, we're seeing dairy prices been pretty strong the last two and a half years or so, and looks like 25 could be another pretty strong year, you know. So it kind of seems like, at least for the time being, it's created some real balance out there.

I think so, too.

And I know there's probably folks that will listen to this that are, that are pure beef producers that are going to say, well, I don't agree with that.

But like I said, if this was going to happen and it was going to happen, and it was inevitable as the technology and, you know, our ability to change how we produce beef and dairy animals continues to evolve, right now is the time to do it, because there's certainly plenty of room in the supply chain for, you know, these cattle that are a little more beef, like, I guess, than, than have the traditional dairy carcass type and, you know, and get the discounts for, for being dairy type. Yeah. So I think the last numbers I saw was about 10% of our slaughter in the country is beef on dairy. That could have changed that was that.

That figure is a couple years old probably. But yeah, it's, there's certainly room for it.

And, you know, the dairy industry is an important part of the beef industry and we need to embrace that. I drink about 3 gallons of milk a day, so I'm sure I sure can't get too cranky with you.

Yeah, you know, I'm, I love my milk and cookies and my, my, my gut tells me that. So when I step on the scale.

Yeah, well, and, you know, I, I do think we're gonna.

Going to kind of ebb the other way, you know, on the dairy side, because with dairy replacement numbers being historically low, you know, I know a lot of us, including ourselves, we're starting to reconsider just how much beef on dairy, we actually do, and kind of starting to curtail some of that, you know, maybe not cold turkey curtailing it, but certainly, you know, being a little more selective as to who gets bred to beef on dairy and who gets bred to a Holstein. So we have more replacements. And, and, you know, it's just, it will evolve for sure.

And, and, you know, and the great thing about the free market system that we work in is going to be, you know, when you guys have opportunities to make money by, by breeding dairy cows to, to a beef breed.

And, but when the, you know, you start getting short on, on dairy cows, folks looking to expand and just like you said, you'll start peeling that back and start, you know, producing more replacement dairy females. So the free market always works itself out.

That's one of the great things about capitalism and the free market system is, is at the end of the day, it usually finds, finds where it needs to be.

So, Travis, I'm going to jump in here, Ron. Travis, for those, for those younger farmers, those people that are out there, you know, thinking about going into farm, they're interested in beef.

They're listening to this podcast and they're saying, whoa, this sounds like the way to go. Is it the way to go? How long does it take for somebody to ramp up into beef production?

Whether they're doing, you know, beef on dairy or straight beef or whatever? What are we looking at here? How long would it take somebody to get up and going and start to make some money?

I have no idea.

Tough question.

That is a tough question, Jay.

I mean, if you're talking about, you know, that's a really a loaded question in a lot of different ways, because we have, you know, you think about the beef industry. The beef industry is incredibly diverse.

Like, there are folks that have 10 cows and then there's folks that have 100 cows, and then there's, there are farmers that have a thousand cows and some that even have more. And all of that plays into, you know, what, what are we talking about with regards to scale and what are you going to do?

I would say, you know, if you're a conventional beef cattle, if you were going to go out and get an investor or invest your own money, expect a reasonable rate of return, or borrow money from a bank to, say, buy 100 head of cows or 50 head of cows and go into the beef business, you know, you're, you're a long ways away from getting your money back out of that or getting your investor paid off or your bank paid off.

Or whatever the case might be, maybe up to 10 years before you could start saying, hey, these cattle are starting to be paid for and we're actually starting to turn a profit.

Now, if you are going to be innovative and think about how you can stack enterprises, add a meat enterprise, for instance, don't be selling feeder cattle. Maybe add some agritourism into your place.

Maybe, you know, do some different things that could, you know, spread some risk out, find some different ways to, to create value in those cattle. Then of course, you can shorten that up. That's one great thing about the beef industry.

Like I said, there's, there's so many different ways that you can, can create value. There's the traditional farming method.

But I tell you what, like I said earlier, at the end of the day, we produce a really tasty, highly nutritious, highly palatable product for people to eat.

And so there's, and there's about 100 different ways or a thousand different ways to market that product, whether it's through fresh or frozen or value added. And anyway, so, so the, you know, the question is how long? I don't have any idea.

I know I'm still paying for my cows, and I am, I'm getting pretty damn old. I've been doing this a long time. But, you know, the, there's certainly opportunities there. I'm, I'm very bullish on agriculture.

I'm bullish on beef, on the beef industry.

I think there's, there's plenty of opportunity there if, if you want to go get it now that just like everything else, you got to want it and you got to work at it. Nobody's going to hand it to you. So.

Interesting, very interesting. Ron, you had a question you were going to ask.

You kind of almost covered it, Jay, but let me, let's jump back to the consumer side for just a minute.

You know, it seems like we talk about demand, not just, you know, buy people buying in the supermarket, but what's the demographic or what's, you know, what's going on, on the kind of eating away from home. You look at the chains like Texas Roadhouse and Longhorn Steakhouse. I mean, those, those restaurants are full every night of the week.

How's that impacting demand, consumer demand?

You know, it impacts it greatly. Oftentimes when we talk about consumer demand in the beef business, we tend to focus on retail. We tend to focus on, on grocery and supermarkets.

But, you know, a good portion of our beef sales end up going through the hotel, restaurant, the food service trade, and you know, you know, the biggest buyer of beef in the world is McDonald's. You know, the, the high end restaurant trade.

Well, and of course you can segment, you know, the restaurant trade into, you know, casual dining, you know, kind of quick service steakhouses like say Outback or Texas Roadhouse. And then of course, you have the fine dining. And the fine dining is a very small portion of that.

That's what, you know, the hotels and the supper clubs and things like that.

But all the metrics on this suggest that for some reason consumers seem to have enough money in their pocket right now at all times that those, those restaurants are doing pretty well. They are, they are staying full. They are consistent purchasers and consumers of our product in the beef industry.

And it seems like coming out of COVID again, and I'll invoke the C word, it seems like the American consumer has got enough disposable income to make this all work.

Now, I don't know how, but it seems like we definitely have enough income in the country to keep those high end, quick service food service steak restaurants up and running. So, yeah, they're, I agree with you. I, I do travel quite a bit.

You go to a place like a, an Outback or a Longhorns or something like that, and you have to wait to get in. And that's pretty crazy to me. But. And you know, and it's $100 bill by the time you're done. So.

Yeah, yeah, that's for certain. Not if I take my son. It gets even more expensive.

All right.

My poor son. I shouldn't pick on him like that. But he's big enough, he can take it.

My son's 15 years old. On, on Sunday night, we were home alone. My wife had to leave. I had to go down to Fargo with my daughter for some stuff and, and I made steak.

He ate three steaks all by himself. Three big ribeye steaks. And I got, I got three little slices and a baked potato. And he cleaned everything else up.

So either I'm really good cook or I'm not feeding that kid nearly enough other than steak. So. But yeah.

And so anyway, that, that's awesome. That is awesome. It's. Yeah. My, I don't know if my son, I mean, my son at 23, he's 6 foot 5, 270 pounds.

He's a big boy and he can put them down when he wants to, but I don't know if he could do that. That's, that's, that's a lot of steak right there. Amen to that, brother.

Yeah, he crushed it.

So, so as we start to wrap up, one last question I have for you is, you know, we're. And I was. And the reason I'm asking you is I was asked this by local news media here recently.

The tariffs that, you know, we're hearing about out there from President Trump, which, you know, in my opinion, there's a lot of, he's, he's setting up a lot of negotiation opportunities based on the language he's using and so on. But what do you see, Travis, from your end in agriculture, especially impacting the beef industry?

Should we start to levy some pretty high tariffs on some of the other countries out there? What impacts would you expect? Or do you think those tariffs are coming or what? You know, what's your political prognostication?

He is, here's what I'll say is that in the first couple of weeks of his presidency, or the first week, I guess it's been, he is pretty much done what he had said he was going to do on the campaign trail. He said he was. Yeah, right. And then one of the things he campaigned on was tariffs.

Yeah.

And so if he implements tariffs on Canada and Mexico and China, that is going to have an effect on agriculture. So, and I know you guys know this, but for your listeners, agriculture is, how do I say this?

We are gambling chips when it comes to larger trade issues. They hold agriculture hostage every time we go into a big trade negotiation. We can't buy more iPhones from China unless they take more beef.

We won't do this unless they buy more soybeans or vice versa. Agriculture trade almost rarely exists in a vacuum. Almost never, in fact exists in a vacuum. It's always part of larger trade deals.

And even if it's off to the side, it's part of larger trade negotiations. So, yeah, if President Trump implements these tariffs on our big agricultural trading partners, buckle up. Expect some volatility in the market.

Expect some things to shake out. Now, that being said, fundamentals are fundamentals. And so on the livestock side, where I live, the fundamentals are still, still very strong.

We still have fairly low supply. We have high demand. Our export market certainly could be affected. Fortunately, our export markets drive, well, they do drive price.

They don't drive all the price. So, yeah, I, I guess, guys, I would be surprised if he doesn't implement some tariffs just because he has said he will do that.

Once again, he is pretty much done what he said he was going to do. And, yeah, that's going to affect it's. Going to affect our trade in ag, regardless of what the tariffs come down on. So that's. That would be my take.

But then, like I said, I go back in the long term. I do like the fundamentals we have in the beef industry. I'll remain bullish on beef and cattle regardless of the. The trade policies.

No, that was. That was. Very good point, Travis. Very good point. Yeah. You know, he. He has been doing exactly what he says.

And to wrap that up, though, do you believe the impacts to. Would be short term or long term? What. What would be your thoughts there?

Well, I mean, once again, our markets work pretty darn well. And I'm not going to say short term just because. But I think that, you know, our markets are always in.

Moving around, and I would say that we would adjust fairly quickly to that and, you know, we would get things in order fairly quickly. Once again, the free market system, you know, is volatile and messy, but almost always gets us to where we need to be. So, you know, it's kind of.

Sometimes you just kind of gotta let the chips fall where they may. And, you know, and I do think that. That any effects that we. That we feel will be, you know, eventually offset the. The free market.

The market system will. Will sort itself out, so.

Well, that's very appreciated. We appreciate your insights on that.

Like I said, I've been getting a lot of questions from our local news media on tariffs and the impact of those, so. Sure. You know, it's, It's. It's out there and people are asking questions about it, so really appreciate. Ron. Anything before we go, sir?

No, I'm all set. I appreciate it, Travis. It was good talking.

Yeah, as always, I enjoy. I enjoy visiting with you guys. So this was. This was fun.

Well, very appreciated, sir. And enjoy that warm weather up there while it lasts. Well, we'll send you some snow so you don't feel like you're missing the winner.

I'm. I've got a couple days here, and then I'm headed to San Antonio. We have National Cattlemen's Convention in San Antonio next week. So I'm. I'm already.

I got out the sunscreen, it's packed, and I am ready. I'm ready for some. Some cold beers on a warm porch somewhere.

Nice. Nice. Yes. Well, think of us while you're enjoying that warm porch someplace. While I'm snow blowing feet of snow out of my driveway.

Yes, indeed.

All right. Well, folks, that's it. We've been talking with Dr. Travis Matic, the founder and owner of Dakota Global Consulting, llc.

And as we said, he is one of our beef gurus that we go to with all of the important questions about the beef industry. Travis, thank you very much, sir. Have a great day. Ron, thank you. You're welcome. And Ron, thank you very much, sir. Folks, that's it. That's a wrap.

And we're gonna turn it over to the announcer to send us away.

For more information, visit www.agricultureevents.com or jcida.com. until next time. Thanks for tuning in to Jay Madison's Rural Americ.