Pecking Away Farms' Profits
Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.
Who is winning with high corn prices? Perhaps a few smart corn speculators on La Salle Street in Chicago are laughing in their new Bentleys, and maybe there are some newly wealthy corn farmers who might enjoy the high prices a bushel fetches these days, but when you look at how crucial corn is in the supply stream of food we consume, your wallet is going to feel anything but happy.
The connection between corn and meat is simple; most of the meat you eat is fed corn. (I say "you" because I was born a vegetarian and have stayed that way. No judgments, though!) The scene of bucolic beef cattle grazing grass their entire lives is a rarity. There are still small organic farm operations that do that, but the majority of beef cattle end up in a feed lot for the last leg of their lives, where they are fed a diet high in corn. Lack of mobility and constant feeding helps the cows "beef up" and reach your dinner table sooner.
Farmers like Steve Foglesong at the Black Gold Ranch can try to keep his cattle on grass feed longer, he can try to "take more cows to market" and consequently have less mouths to feed but at some point his input costs will have to get passed onto consumers. No cattle farmer likes to have to get rid of their herd until it’s time because it takes two-to-three years to develop a single animal.
You'll actually feel the pinch faster if you are shopping for chicken or pork because the life cycles of these animals is shorter. When we caught up with David Hale, who helps run his tiny family farm in Campbell, Texas, he told us that the cycle of a chicken is somewhere around nine weeks and every time he has gone to buy feed for the past year, it has been higher. He even showed us his feed bills that were 50 percent higher than the year before – and they now included a fuel surcharge which wasn't there before.
(AP Photo /Musadeq Sadeq)
The connection between corn and meat is simple; most of the meat you eat is fed corn. (I say "you" because I was born a vegetarian and have stayed that way. No judgments, though!) The scene of bucolic beef cattle grazing grass their entire lives is a rarity. There are still small organic farm operations that do that, but the majority of beef cattle end up in a feed lot for the last leg of their lives, where they are fed a diet high in corn. Lack of mobility and constant feeding helps the cows "beef up" and reach your dinner table sooner.
Farmers like Steve Foglesong at the Black Gold Ranch can try to keep his cattle on grass feed longer, he can try to "take more cows to market" and consequently have less mouths to feed but at some point his input costs will have to get passed onto consumers. No cattle farmer likes to have to get rid of their herd until it’s time because it takes two-to-three years to develop a single animal.
You'll actually feel the pinch faster if you are shopping for chicken or pork because the life cycles of these animals is shorter. When we caught up with David Hale, who helps run his tiny family farm in Campbell, Texas, he told us that the cycle of a chicken is somewhere around nine weeks and every time he has gone to buy feed for the past year, it has been higher. He even showed us his feed bills that were 50 percent higher than the year before – and they now included a fuel surcharge which wasn't there before.
