Wildfire season and livestock production – with Erik Kalsta

The beef industry has seen quite a few changes, as we've all borne witness to lately.

But starting off, we've lately heard of another plant closure from Tyson happening in Illinois.

Also, a packaging, not necessarily packing, plant closing down in Utah as well.

It just kind of seems to be a continuing trend moving on.

I wonder if the contraction of the beef herd is kind of trickling, I guess, upwards in the stream.

It's wild though, right? Like every conversation you have with people, it's like, surely we're going to start retaining heifers and rebuilding the cow herd.

And I mean, I've been hearing that for, I don't know, three, four or five years.

Like that's, everybody expects it to happen in weeks.

You know, every, every new survey that comes out, it's like, Now, this is actually the lowest.

This is our year, right? 75 years.

Yeah.

Or whatever that number is.

So it's kind of wild to see that.

And these big plants that, I mean, have tons of jobs and produce a lot of cattle or a lot of beef, bring in a lot of cattle and do so much for these communities, just like...

Shutting down, it's wild to see one of these happen, right?

And we've

had however many in the last couple of years.

Yeah, so many.

Yeah, I wonder.

My brother, he runs my folks' operation now, our family operation, and he has to retain heifers this year.

His cow herd is getting too old.

It is getting in the kind of danger zone.

He needs to start having his new cows ready to go in the next couple of years.

So whether he wants to or not, he has to retain his heifers.

And I'm betting that that's probably happening a lot too.

The beef industry has seen quite a few changes, as we've all borne witness to lately.

But starting off, we've lately heard of another plant closure from Tyson happening in Illinois.

Also, a packaging, not necessarily packing, plant closing down in Utah as well.

It just kind of seems to be a continuing trend moving on.

I wonder if the contraction of the beef herd is kind of trickling, I guess, upwards in the stream.

It's wild though, right? Like every conversation you have with people, it's like, surely we're going to start retaining heifers and rebuilding the cow herd.

And I mean, I've been hearing that for, I don't know, three, four or five years.

Like that's, everybody expects it to happen in weeks.

You know, every, every new survey that comes out, it's like, Now, this is actually the lowest.

This is our year, right? 75 years.

Yeah.

Or whatever that number is.

So it's kind of wild to see that.

And these big plants that, I mean, have tons of jobs and produce a lot of cattle or a lot of beef, bring in a lot of cattle and do so much for these communities, just like...

Shutting down, it's wild to see one of these happen, right?

And we've

had however many in the last couple of years.

Yeah, so many.

Yeah, I wonder.

My brother, he runs my folks' operation now, our family operation, and he has to retain heifers this year.

His cow herd is getting too old.

It is getting in the kind of danger zone.

He needs to start having his new cows ready to go in the next couple of years.

So whether he wants to or not, he has to retain his heifers.

And I'm betting that that's probably happening a lot too.