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Gold, bitcoin and US equities are chalking up record highs. But there’s another asset that’s also scaling new heights: cattle. The price of bovine beasts is up nearly a third in the past year. Prices aren’t just inflated in the pastures and abattoirs, but on dinner plates too.
One explanation is shortness of supply. Droughts that ravage grasslands feed through to reduced herds. The number of cows slaughtered in the US hit a decade low this summer, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Lower US beef production means higher imports, which rose 16 per cent in the first half of 2025. Tariffs thus contribute to current high prices.
Like most commodities, this is a cyclical business. Farmers respond to high prices by increasing their herds, as they did from 2004 to 2007. That boom then turned to bust as costs of feed and energy rose. Within a decade, the national herd stood at just over 88mn, the lowest count since 1952.
Quadruped commodities take a while to react to price signals, however. Cows can — as the phrase goes — be “put to the bull” sooner; the US already squeezes out more growth that way than the UK. But the effect is marginal and limited. Bovine cycles are longer than those for pigs and poultry, thanks to human-length gestation periods followed by time spent milking calves.
There are meatier issues too, such as subsidies in Europe and market concentration in the US, where the biggest four meatpackers control four-fifths of the market. Ranchers and buyers, such as burger chain McDonald’s, gripe that they keep capacity tight, lowering the price of live cows and increasing that of ground beef. Brazil’s JBS earlier this year paid more than $80mn to settle some of these claims.
While supply may remain stunted, demand could move in the opposite direction. Evidence shows growth in protein-heavy foodstuffs, perhaps driven by the muscle-loss fears of those on weight-loss drugs. Indeed, US retail revenue from beef rose 12.5 per cent in the year to the beginning of September, says the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
All of which suggests prices will remain elevated into next year. Farmers, too, appear to believe this. The signs are that they currently prefer to feed their existing cows handsomely, rather than slaughtering them to take advantage of high prices — thus betting on further stampedes.