@cfcattle1: The price on the package can't tell you the profit. It can't even tell you what the rancher got. Say a shopper sees ground beef at seven dollars a pound and asks why the rancher is charging so much. A rancher selling calves into the commodity market did not choose that supermarket price. The calf producer sells one product at one stage. Finished cattle, boxed beef, and retail ground beef trade at other stages, under different terms. Those prices are connected. They are not interchangeable. USDA tracks beef price spreads every month. But the farm-share figure in those spreads is not the cow-calf rancher's profit margin, and it's not the percentage of a particular ground-beef package that lands in the original calf producer's account. The farm-stage value in that series is about slaughter-ready cattle, not a weaned calf check. The gap between farm and retail values covers marketing costs and margins: processing, distribution, retailing. A difference between two prices doesn't tell you the profit left after those costs. It also doesn't tell you what the rancher received. Tight cattle supplies, demand, and the costs of moving beef through the chain all belong in the explanation. None of that makes the grocery bill easier to pay. It does mean the shelf price alone can't tell you what the rancher got, or what anyone in the chain earned. You can understand the shopper's frustration without pretending the calf producer wrote the supermarket's price tag. Question: what do people most often misunderstand about the difference between your cattle check and the meat-case price? #RanchLife #CattleRanch #KnowYourNumbers

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Monday 19 October 2026 19:36:22 GMT