If this would lead to overall lower beef consumption it would be a net positive, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. For now it just seems like dumb policy (tariffs) at work, which...
If this would lead to overall lower beef consumption it would be a net positive, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. For now it just seems like dumb policy (tariffs) at work, which is hitting people already struggling. Not a sustainable way to achieve a positive goal. It’s pretty depressing to watch from a distance, because it all feels so incredibly pointless.
I don’t currently live in the US, but when I did I was always so surprised about produce prices. Cooking yourself using fresh products was often more expensive than buying processed or even fast food. It baffled me because the part of Europe I came from was the other way around. Growing up, going to McDonalds was a luxury that we couldn’t afford. Anybody have an idea why this is/was the case?
The U.S. has vast corporate players (Walmart, Costco, Kroger, etc.) that control up to 70% of the grocery market in some regions. The largest four meatpacking companies now control 51% of the...
The U.S. has vast corporate players (Walmart, Costco, Kroger, etc.) that control up to 70% of the grocery market in some regions. The largest four meatpacking companies now control 51% of the market [PDF warning], and this concentration appears to contribute to rising prices with some evidence of collusion. Same thing for food wholesalers, agricultural inputs and everything else.
It's hurting smaller farmers, consumers, and independent grocers. This is why Lina Khan and her team were Public Enemy #1 as far as big business is concerned.
It's not competition among Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and others. It's that there are city boroughs, counties, or other areas where one of those companies is the only major grocer. That store...
It's not competition among Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and others. It's that there are city boroughs, counties, or other areas where one of those companies is the only major grocer. That store location might have significantly higher prices than the company's locations which have area competitors.
I really don't know. Americans spend among the least on groceries in the world, relative to their incomes. And while I'm certainly not denying that in some areas prices might be high due to local...
I really don't know. Americans spend among the least on groceries in the world, relative to their incomes. And while I'm certainly not denying that in some areas prices might be high due to local monopolies, that just doesn't make sense as a cause of nationwide food price increases. The petrol market is even more concentrated, right? There are basically three major brands that operate across America. And what do they do? They all open service stations right across from one another, and prices are kept down by competition. That's very similar to what we see in the grocery market.
"Americans spend among the least on groceries in the world" is a situation where average income, rather than median, is doing some very heavy lifting. Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. were...
"Americans spend among the least on groceries in the world" is a situation where average income, rather than median, is doing some very heavy lifting. Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. were food insecure in 2023, even before the recent subsidy stoppage and cuts.
I don't know that gas stations are a good analogy. When I see your three gas stations on facing corners, I usually see three identical prices. There are fewer steps in the fuel supply chain, mostly owned by the same company as the brand on the gas station outlet. Gas station franchisees have little latitude on primary product pricing (and it's certainly possible that oil majors coordinate or collude), so they make their money on store goods.
I'll agree that food prices are complicated, and it's not just grocery stores. That's why I linked data on corporate concentration throughout the supply chain. It's just that the populist rhetoric dwells on the most immediate source of people's pain - the grocery checkout. Good read here.
To be more specific, that data is that Americans spend less on food as a total share of their personal consumer expenditure -- meaning the presence of billionaires isn't meaningfully messing with...
To be more specific, that data is that Americans spend less on food as a total share of their personal consumer expenditure -- meaning the presence of billionaires isn't meaningfully messing with the data.
When I see your three gas stations on facing corners, I usually see three identical prices. There are fewer steps in the fuel supply chain, mostly owned by the same company as the brand on the gas station outlet.
That was my point! If the argument is "concentration in the food supply chain has led to artificially high prices for consumers," we need to be able to explain why in an even more concentrated sector, market competition has resulted in low, identical prices instead of artificially high prices.
My argument is that we can't, and that the food sector isn't so meaningfully different from other sectors that it follows completely different rules. The conclusion, then, is that food prices a) are higher than they were but not high in America, in relative terms, and b) the reasons for price increases have way more to do with tariffs and a sudden shortage of immigrant labor than they do with corporate concentration or price-fixing.
I've wandered kind of far afield from your original point, though, so to return to it --
It's that there are city boroughs, counties, or other areas where one of those companies is the only major grocer. That store location might have significantly higher prices than the company's locations which have area competitors.
Almost certainly that store's prices will be higher than where there's competitors, for sure. But how does it follow that corporate concentration hurts the prices? (I think it's totally fair to argue that there are moral/ineffable harms done). Basically by definition a huge corporation gets economy of scale, right? An independent grocer operating in the area, if it were the only store, would almost certainly have even higher prices. The problem there isn't that the store is owned by Kroger, it's that there's only one store. It doesn't really matter who owns it.
Because the US economy favours larger players on every level. Eg Costco huge pack is cheaper per kilo than buying 1 steak. But also buying whole cow is cheaper per kilo still. Then buying an...
Because the US economy favours larger players on every level. Eg Costco huge pack is cheaper per kilo than buying 1 steak. But also buying whole cow is cheaper per kilo still. Then buying an entire herd is crazy cheap. Etc. chains have a complete integration from lettuce to beef to soft drinks at such a scale that the unit price would seem practically free in comparison.
In the article, beef is at an all time high of $243.58 per 100 US pounds, but costs regular consumers $6.32 -- which is a price so low I haven't seen. More like 10 per US pound.
McD food is in fact outrageously overpriced , and they have a much higher profit margin than Tesla, Apple and Netflix.
This isn't exactly unique to the US. It's just economies of scale. If you KNOW someone wants a shitload of something you can more efficiently package, move, and plan it. If you need to parcel it...
Because the US economy favours larger players on every level.
This isn't exactly unique to the US. It's just economies of scale. If you KNOW someone wants a shitload of something you can more efficiently package, move, and plan it. If you need to parcel it out you're paying for, at the bare minimum, extra packaging, logistics, and uncertainty.
This is tricky to judge because, as the link you shared tells us, McDonalds owns real estate but the restaurants are separate businesses run by franchises. The McDonalds corporation is mostly the...
This is tricky to judge because, as the link you shared tells us, McDonalds owns real estate but the restaurants are separate businesses run by franchises. The McDonalds corporation is mostly the landlord.
So food and wages aren’t a cost to McDonalds. They are costs for the franchise owner. Looks like franchises are estimated to have a 10-15% profit margin. But their rent and franchise fees are a cost of them and McDonalds profits come out of that. According to This article rent is 10-16%, there’s a royalty fee of 4-5% of sales, and an advertising fee of at least 4% of sales.
This report suggests food costs for the franchise owner are about 25%.
This suggests the McDonalds makes more money by opening new restaurants (with higher rents) and by increasing sales (since they get a percent of sales).
Hey, I started eating WAY less beef when it became ridiculously expensive, to the point where I pretty much never buy it for home cooking anymore. Maybe it works for some people.
Hey, I started eating WAY less beef when it became ridiculously expensive, to the point where I pretty much never buy it for home cooking anymore. Maybe it works for some people.
Same here, but the catch was that this was well over a decade ago. I also noticed that the beef I could buy was also getting incredibly low in quality; it was stringy and slightly off-tasting and...
Same here, but the catch was that this was well over a decade ago. I also noticed that the beef I could buy was also getting incredibly low in quality; it was stringy and slightly off-tasting and had big pockets of fat, so when I was buying it I was no longer making steaks, but adding it into stews with strong flavors to help mask the deficiencies.
I’m whole food vegan now, and it’s astounding how much cheaper and fulfilling my meals are now that meat is no longer part of the food equation, and while adapting to cooking without it was tough at first, I realize now that it simplifies the process of cooking things because plants require much less babying. Red meat in particular is actually pretty bad for your health, especially when you are consuming it frequently, and my health was actually the primary reason why I made the decision to change. Frankly I find it amazing that people are still buying so much of it now. But that’s the power of culture, I suppose. It’s hard to pay attention to warnings about how it causes cancer when you are constantly bombarded by images of cooked beef products and everyone talking about protein like it’s a religion.
Probably not, I'm eating mostly chicken thighs and a little ground sausage as my meats now, they're easy to cook and tasty enough. I haven't really been buying beef since covid.
Probably not, I'm eating mostly chicken thighs and a little ground sausage as my meats now, they're easy to cook and tasty enough. I haven't really been buying beef since covid.
I live in an area where there's local beef, so I stopped buying from the grocery store maybe five years ago. We ran out one time and so I went and bought some "grass fed" ground beef from the...
I live in an area where there's local beef, so I stopped buying from the grocery store maybe five years ago. We ran out one time and so I went and bought some "grass fed" ground beef from the store... It was not good. It tasted like it had been cooked in really old cooking oil, just like, greasy and tasteless. Such a weird experience.
One thing worth noting is that Americans spend among the least in the world on food relative to their incomes. It's much harder to distill out how much people are spending on which foods, so I...
One thing worth noting is that Americans spend among the least in the world on food relative to their incomes. It's much harder to distill out how much people are spending on which foods, so I don't have data there. But I do have an anecdote.
I've traveled/lived extensively across the US and Europe and I've never noticed a large difference in the price of produce between the US and Europe (accounting for exchange rates). Specific products vary considerably, obviously, but overall grocery bills have been pretty similar in comparable countries. (If you're somewhere where per capita GDP is a fraction of America's, then... yeah, it's cheaper there). You're far from the only person to feel like produce is more expensive in America, though. My guess is that many people (can't speak for you, obviously) accidentally compare high-end markets in the US (e.g. whole foods) with regular supermarkets in Europe, and thus feel that US prices are much higher. Or they notice - and therefore remember - when something is much cheaper than in America ("my god, this wine is only $2!"), but don't notice/remember all the stuff that's more expensive ("well, it's France, you know?")
I’m in Texas and even here the prices are outrageously expensive. I’ve switched to pork, poultry, mushrooms, and tofu. Honestly the quality of the beef has been so terrible lately that I don’t...
I’m in Texas and even here the prices are outrageously expensive. I’ve switched to pork, poultry, mushrooms, and tofu. Honestly the quality of the beef has been so terrible lately that I don’t even really miss it.
It's just one crisis after another. I've already had to ditch most chicken aside from thighs and drumsticks due to the Woody Breast issue. Of course those are steadily climbing in price now as...
It's just one crisis after another. I've already had to ditch most chicken aside from thighs and drumsticks due to the Woody Breast issue. Of course those are steadily climbing in price now as consumers shift away from the disgusting texture nightmare that most whole breast meat is becoming.
It’s much more likely that you’ll get a chicken breast with issues than you’ll get one without, Tuell points out. In a recent study, researchers examined 179 chicken breasts and found that only 18.4 percent were normal, while 13.4 percent had a single issue—like woody breast—and 68.2 percent had more than one disorder.
I don't eat much meat, and when I do, I spend the extra to buy organic and free-range because of allergy issues from antibiotic residues and a desire to support more sustainable, humane farming. I...
I don't eat much meat, and when I do, I spend the extra to buy organic and free-range because of allergy issues from antibiotic residues and a desire to support more sustainable, humane farming. I haven't run into the Woody Breast issue in poultry yet?
The woody breast issue seems to be mostly appearing in industrial scale chicken farming, where they focus on rapidly growing the chicken to a large salable size within a very short amount of time,...
The woody breast issue seems to be mostly appearing in industrial scale chicken farming, where they focus on rapidly growing the chicken to a large salable size within a very short amount of time, I want to say something absurd like 3-6 months. I’ve heard the phrase “mutant chickens” bandied about here and there.
That was an interesting read. The sizes of modern livestock cause them all kinds of health problems and suffering. Most of those problems don't impact the consumer beyond lower meat prices, so you...
That was an interesting read.
“These conditions are linked to rapid growth rates in modern broilers,” Tuell says. “As the breast muscles rapidly grow, their blood supply is not able to keep up, leading to degeneration of the muscle tissue over time, along with excessive accumulation of fibrous connective tissue and fat.”
The sizes of modern livestock cause them all kinds of health problems and suffering. Most of those problems don't impact the consumer beyond lower meat prices, so you don't read news articles about them.
Yeah I’ve been buying exclusively dark meat for years, because previously the issue with light meat chicken was that nobody knew how to cook it well. Now the problem is that nobody can grow it well.
Yeah I’ve been buying exclusively dark meat for years, because previously the issue with light meat chicken was that nobody knew how to cook it well. Now the problem is that nobody can grow it well.
From the article, a month ago: ... ... That tariff was just repealed.
From the article, a month ago:
Ground beef prices hit a record high of $6.32 a pound in August, and beef prices were up 13.9% year-over-year according to the consumer price index, far outstripping overall inflation rise of 2.9%.
Meanwhile, a culmination of years of low prices, rising costs to raise cattle, and years-long droughts that dried up grazing pasture caused cattle ranchers to slash their beef herds to the lowest level since 1951. As a result, CME Group live cattle futures prices recently rose to a high of $243.58 per hundredweight. (A hundredweight is equivalent to 100lbs.)
There are several reasons for ranchers’ hesitancy, says David Anderson, livestock specialist at Texas A&M University. The last time cattle prices set a record in 2014, ranchers quickly bred more bovines, only to see prices collapse. Now he estimates cattle ranchers are making well-over $500 per head selling cattle and so far show little incentive to expand their herds.
After several years of losing money, ranchers are grateful for the higher returns but many are gun shy to rebuild.
...
Beef production has dipped further recently because the US closed the Mexican border to cattle imports to prevent the spread of New World screwworm, a species of flesh-eating fly larvae. With domestic supplies tight, it has a ripple effect on the national beef price, he says.
...
Last year the US imported 16% of its beef needs, and tariffs will make your next burger more costly. Fifty percent of US beef consumption is ground beef, and Brazil is the biggest supplier of beef trimmings. The additional 50% tariff on Brazil imports means the total tax on those beef imports is 76.4%.
So far there’s little sign of Americans eating less beef despite the high prices, but that’s the biggest worry, since beef prices have increased much more than pork or chicken. That’s what worries producers like Kenzy and Perez.
They could, you know, take fewer profits, and lower the prices if they price themselves out of the market.
So far there’s little sign of Americans eating less beef despite the high prices, but that’s the biggest worry, since beef prices have increased much more than pork or chicken. That’s what worries producers like Kenzy and Perez.
They could, you know, take fewer profits, and lower the prices if they price themselves out of the market.
It’s mostly not up to them. I’m sure a grocery store chain would be happy to take the extra profits if they happen to get a good deal on beef. Alternatively, they could lower their prices to try...
It’s mostly not up to them. I’m sure a grocery store chain would be happy to take the extra profits if they happen to get a good deal on beef. Alternatively, they could lower their prices to try to gain market share, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will.
Market trends are bigger than any single business, unless it’s a monopoly.
If this would lead to overall lower beef consumption it would be a net positive, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. For now it just seems like dumb policy (tariffs) at work, which is hitting people already struggling. Not a sustainable way to achieve a positive goal. It’s pretty depressing to watch from a distance, because it all feels so incredibly pointless.
I don’t currently live in the US, but when I did I was always so surprised about produce prices. Cooking yourself using fresh products was often more expensive than buying processed or even fast food. It baffled me because the part of Europe I came from was the other way around. Growing up, going to McDonalds was a luxury that we couldn’t afford. Anybody have an idea why this is/was the case?
The U.S. has vast corporate players (Walmart, Costco, Kroger, etc.) that control up to 70% of the grocery market in some regions. The largest four meatpacking companies now control 51% of the market [PDF warning], and this concentration appears to contribute to rising prices with some evidence of collusion. Same thing for food wholesalers, agricultural inputs and everything else.
It's hurting smaller farmers, consumers, and independent grocers. This is why Lina Khan and her team were Public Enemy #1 as far as big business is concerned.
Hurting smaller farmers and independent grocers, definitely, but how does the competition between walmart and kroger hurt consumers?
It's not competition among Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and others. It's that there are city boroughs, counties, or other areas where one of those companies is the only major grocer. That store location might have significantly higher prices than the company's locations which have area competitors.
I really don't know. Americans spend among the least on groceries in the world, relative to their incomes. And while I'm certainly not denying that in some areas prices might be high due to local monopolies, that just doesn't make sense as a cause of nationwide food price increases. The petrol market is even more concentrated, right? There are basically three major brands that operate across America. And what do they do? They all open service stations right across from one another, and prices are kept down by competition. That's very similar to what we see in the grocery market.
"Americans spend among the least on groceries in the world" is a situation where average income, rather than median, is doing some very heavy lifting. Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. were food insecure in 2023, even before the recent subsidy stoppage and cuts.
I don't know that gas stations are a good analogy. When I see your three gas stations on facing corners, I usually see three identical prices. There are fewer steps in the fuel supply chain, mostly owned by the same company as the brand on the gas station outlet. Gas station franchisees have little latitude on primary product pricing (and it's certainly possible that oil majors coordinate or collude), so they make their money on store goods.
I'll agree that food prices are complicated, and it's not just grocery stores. That's why I linked data on corporate concentration throughout the supply chain. It's just that the populist rhetoric dwells on the most immediate source of people's pain - the grocery checkout. Good read here.
To be more specific, that data is that Americans spend less on food as a total share of their personal consumer expenditure -- meaning the presence of billionaires isn't meaningfully messing with the data.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-consumer-expenditure-spent-on-food
The confusion there is my fault.
That was my point! If the argument is "concentration in the food supply chain has led to artificially high prices for consumers," we need to be able to explain why in an even more concentrated sector, market competition has resulted in low, identical prices instead of artificially high prices.
My argument is that we can't, and that the food sector isn't so meaningfully different from other sectors that it follows completely different rules. The conclusion, then, is that food prices a) are higher than they were but not high in America, in relative terms, and b) the reasons for price increases have way more to do with tariffs and a sudden shortage of immigrant labor than they do with corporate concentration or price-fixing.
I've wandered kind of far afield from your original point, though, so to return to it --
Almost certainly that store's prices will be higher than where there's competitors, for sure. But how does it follow that corporate concentration hurts the prices? (I think it's totally fair to argue that there are moral/ineffable harms done). Basically by definition a huge corporation gets economy of scale, right? An independent grocer operating in the area, if it were the only store, would almost certainly have even higher prices. The problem there isn't that the store is owned by Kroger, it's that there's only one store. It doesn't really matter who owns it.
Because the US economy favours larger players on every level. Eg Costco huge pack is cheaper per kilo than buying 1 steak. But also buying whole cow is cheaper per kilo still. Then buying an entire herd is crazy cheap. Etc. chains have a complete integration from lettuce to beef to soft drinks at such a scale that the unit price would seem practically free in comparison.
In the article, beef is at an all time high of $243.58 per 100 US pounds, but costs regular consumers $6.32 -- which is a price so low I haven't seen. More like 10 per US pound.
McD food is in fact outrageously overpriced , and they have a much higher profit margin than Tesla, Apple and Netflix.
This isn't exactly unique to the US. It's just economies of scale. If you KNOW someone wants a shitload of something you can more efficiently package, move, and plan it. If you need to parcel it out you're paying for, at the bare minimum, extra packaging, logistics, and uncertainty.
This is tricky to judge because, as the link you shared tells us, McDonalds owns real estate but the restaurants are separate businesses run by franchises. The McDonalds corporation is mostly the landlord.
So food and wages aren’t a cost to McDonalds. They are costs for the franchise owner. Looks like franchises are estimated to have a 10-15% profit margin. But their rent and franchise fees are a cost of them and McDonalds profits come out of that. According to This article rent is 10-16%, there’s a royalty fee of 4-5% of sales, and an advertising fee of at least 4% of sales.
This report suggests food costs for the franchise owner are about 25%.
This suggests the McDonalds makes more money by opening new restaurants (with higher rents) and by increasing sales (since they get a percent of sales).
Hey, I started eating WAY less beef when it became ridiculously expensive, to the point where I pretty much never buy it for home cooking anymore. Maybe it works for some people.
Same here, but the catch was that this was well over a decade ago. I also noticed that the beef I could buy was also getting incredibly low in quality; it was stringy and slightly off-tasting and had big pockets of fat, so when I was buying it I was no longer making steaks, but adding it into stews with strong flavors to help mask the deficiencies.
I’m whole food vegan now, and it’s astounding how much cheaper and fulfilling my meals are now that meat is no longer part of the food equation, and while adapting to cooking without it was tough at first, I realize now that it simplifies the process of cooking things because plants require much less babying. Red meat in particular is actually pretty bad for your health, especially when you are consuming it frequently, and my health was actually the primary reason why I made the decision to change. Frankly I find it amazing that people are still buying so much of it now. But that’s the power of culture, I suppose. It’s hard to pay attention to warnings about how it causes cancer when you are constantly bombarded by images of cooked beef products and everyone talking about protein like it’s a religion.
That’s awesome. How has the change been? And if beef prices would drop again, do you think you’d switch back again?
Probably not, I'm eating mostly chicken thighs and a little ground sausage as my meats now, they're easy to cook and tasty enough. I haven't really been buying beef since covid.
I live in an area where there's local beef, so I stopped buying from the grocery store maybe five years ago. We ran out one time and so I went and bought some "grass fed" ground beef from the store... It was not good. It tasted like it had been cooked in really old cooking oil, just like, greasy and tasteless. Such a weird experience.
One thing worth noting is that Americans spend among the least in the world on food relative to their incomes. It's much harder to distill out how much people are spending on which foods, so I don't have data there. But I do have an anecdote.
I've traveled/lived extensively across the US and Europe and I've never noticed a large difference in the price of produce between the US and Europe (accounting for exchange rates). Specific products vary considerably, obviously, but overall grocery bills have been pretty similar in comparable countries. (If you're somewhere where per capita GDP is a fraction of America's, then... yeah, it's cheaper there). You're far from the only person to feel like produce is more expensive in America, though. My guess is that many people (can't speak for you, obviously) accidentally compare high-end markets in the US (e.g. whole foods) with regular supermarkets in Europe, and thus feel that US prices are much higher. Or they notice - and therefore remember - when something is much cheaper than in America ("my god, this wine is only $2!"), but don't notice/remember all the stuff that's more expensive ("well, it's France, you know?")
I’m in Texas and even here the prices are outrageously expensive. I’ve switched to pork, poultry, mushrooms, and tofu. Honestly the quality of the beef has been so terrible lately that I don’t even really miss it.
It's just one crisis after another. I've already had to ditch most chicken aside from thighs and drumsticks due to the Woody Breast issue. Of course those are steadily climbing in price now as consumers shift away from the disgusting texture nightmare that most whole breast meat is becoming.
I don't eat much meat, and when I do, I spend the extra to buy organic and free-range because of allergy issues from antibiotic residues and a desire to support more sustainable, humane farming. I haven't run into the Woody Breast issue in poultry yet?
The woody breast issue seems to be mostly appearing in industrial scale chicken farming, where they focus on rapidly growing the chicken to a large salable size within a very short amount of time, I want to say something absurd like 3-6 months. I’ve heard the phrase “mutant chickens” bandied about here and there.
That was an interesting read.
The sizes of modern livestock cause them all kinds of health problems and suffering. Most of those problems don't impact the consumer beyond lower meat prices, so you don't read news articles about them.
Yeah I’ve been buying exclusively dark meat for years, because previously the issue with light meat chicken was that nobody knew how to cook it well. Now the problem is that nobody can grow it well.
From the article, a month ago:
...
...
That tariff was just repealed.
They could, you know, take fewer profits, and lower the prices if they price themselves out of the market.
It’s mostly not up to them. I’m sure a grocery store chain would be happy to take the extra profits if they happen to get a good deal on beef. Alternatively, they could lower their prices to try to gain market share, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will.
Market trends are bigger than any single business, unless it’s a monopoly.