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US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

bbc.com

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Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#131

Post by JohnFen »

jLaForest wrote: post #67
JohnFen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much disagree that it's a worse product.

i mean that cant be true if you also admit to only buying it because your preferred product became too expensive.

I never said beef was my preferred product, nor that I'm only buying pork because I can't justify buying beef. I like beef and pork equally, and have always bought both.

What I said was that the price of beef reached a point where it's not worth the money for me, so I'm not buying it. I've mostly replaced it with pork (and to a lesser degree, chicken).

Just to head off another potential misunderstanding, this also isn't a case of being unable to afford beef. I'm doing fine on the money front. It's a case of the cost/benefit ratio of beef no longer being favorable for me.

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#132

Post by vladsanchez »

ab5tract wrote: post #124
vitaflo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person eating one single hamburger uses more water than an entire year of LLM use for the same person. Yet we are very concerned about water use in data centers, but nobody cares about McDonalds.

Respectfully, I would like to see a source or at least the math for that.

Here it is:

[The water footprint of a single hamburger is *significantly higher than* that of using a large language model (LLM) for a year. For example, the water used for one hamburger is primarily due to the irrigation of cattle feed crops, while data centers like xAI's Colossus 2 consume much less water overall.](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=A+person+eating+one+single+hamburg...)

States that it's significantly higher but the breakdown shows a 660gal vs 1000gal (Single Burger vs 1yr LLM Usage) water usage...

Item Water Footprint (Gallons)

Single Hamburger Approximately 660 gallons

Year of LLM Usage Approximately 1,000 gallons

Results also contain an important disclaimer: "Auto-generated based on listed sources. May contain inaccuracies."

You be the judge ;)

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#133

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #119
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "greed" aspect is always bullshit unless there is a specific instance of market failure like monopoly power or collusion. This has definitely happened, so I'm not discounting it, but in those cases folks should just say the issue is monopoly concentration or collusion. Saying "greed" comes from people who fundamentally believe economics doesn't exist, or don't understand it. Everyone in the economy is "greedy". C…

Name one thing cheaper than it was 6 years ago…

[dead]

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#134

Post by lenkite »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #130
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only McDonalds charges $20 for a burger instead of $10, people will go elsewhere. If everyone charges $20 for a burger, people will still go to McDonalds. In such a state, no individual place would dare charge $10 again. Why cut revenue to nearly half? It’s not like they have the capacity to sell 20x the usual volume… I’m not convinced that basic economics works when output capacity isn’t fully scalable. Same reas…

> Why cut revenue to nearly half? Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street. > I’m not convinced that basic economics works when output capacity isn’t fully scalable. Economics works for land, which isn't scalable. > Same reason no lawn care team tries to deeply undercut competitors That wo…

> Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street.

Sure and now after having become the Shoggoth monopoly, Amazon is now increasing fees. Squeeze your competitors out via unlimited money and then begin to squeeze your customers after you become of the lone poles in the forest.

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#135

Post by rstuart4133 »

lenkite wrote: post #134
rstuart4133 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why cut revenue to nearly half? Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street. > I’m not convinced that basic economics works when output capacity isn’t fully scalable. Economics works for land, which isn't scalable. > Same reason no lawn care team tries to deeply undercut competitors That wo…

> Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street. Sure and now after having become the Shoggoth monopoly, Amazon is now increasing fees. Squeeze your competitors out via unlimited money and then begin to squeeze your customers after you become of the lone poles in the forest.

What part of "Amazon's margin is a competitors opportunity" aren't you groking?

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#136

Post by lenkite »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #135
lenkite wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street. Sure and now after having become the Shoggoth monopoly, Amazon is now increasing fees. Squeeze your competitors out via unlimited money and then begin to squeeze your customers after you become of the lone poles in the forest.

What part of "Amazon's margin is a competitors opportunity" aren't you groking?

The one where being the dominant player and executing anti-competitive practices removes any opportunity. Being a sufficiently big bullying tree chokes out all future undergrowth for others

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#137

Post by laughing_man »

yojo wrote: post #45
TulliusCicero wrote: post #16

> A new pick-up truck that once cost $40,000 now runs to $100,000. A wooden fence post has gone from about $6 to as much as $19. A quarter-mile roll of barbed wire has doubled, from $60 to $130. Everything he uses day to day, he says, has jumped in price since the Covid pandemic. I know why pick-ups have gone up in cost (though I don't think it's quite to 2.5x levels like suggested here since the pandemic), but woode…

At the beginning of the pandemic all the mills cut production anticipating economic collapse that didn’t come. Prices spiked on high demand and low production. Mills did ramp back up, but it’s unclear to me if they used it as a chance to do so slowly/preserve margins. Lumber never got close to pre-pandemic levels. Tariffs probably also play a role here. About a quarter of US lumber comes from Canada, and barbed wire…

Part of the problem during Covid in the US was US lumber mills are set up to do trees of a certain size. If the trees are harvested late they're too big, so we had to send a lot of lumber to Canada where it could be processed.

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#138

Post by laughing_man »

bob1029 wrote: post #126

> And while meatpacking companies have increased the prices they charge for their beef, there is a limit. This is because supermarkets, restaurants – and US consumers – can, and will, simply switch to buying chicken or cheaper imported beef instead. I think you would be amazed at how cost insensitive some Americans are and how large that cohort is. Ground beef would have to exceed $20/lb before I would consider alter…

There are certainly people who are insensitive to beef prices, but a lot of people aren't. I stopped buying ground beef when it went over $10/lb at my local supermarket. Pork and chicken haven't gone up nearly as much.

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#139

Post by laughing_man »

silisili wrote: post #116
JohnFen wrote: post #11

Beef prices have become simply insane. The value I get from beef can no longer justify the expense, so I've simply stopped buying it at all. I've largely replaced it with pork. Pork used to be the most popular meat in the US. I wonder if it will be again.

Outside of a ribeye, I much prefer pork and eat it way more often. I'm rather selfishly afraid that everyone running from beef is going to cause the pork price to skyrocket, but I haven't seen it quite yet.

The entire life cycle of a pig raised for pork is around six months, so pork producers can scale up quickly if the demand is there.

Re: US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money

#140

Post by tpmoney »

dieselgate wrote: post #117
tpmoney wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that's pretty specious reasoning. If I start a business selling space water cannons that anyone can use to spray water at the ISS as it flies by. If these cannons are consuming whole farms worth of water in use and just blasting it out into space, you can still be mad at the water waste because you think that water could be put to better uses like growing animals for hot dogs and chicken nuggets, and not fleeting…

Respectfully, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Skipping the analogy and going straight for the point then, it is possible to be against something because you view it to be a waste of a resource, but to be for something else that someone else views as a waste of a resource. "Waste of a resource" is relative to what you think that resource should be used for.
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