I haven’t been able to afford an American-raised rib eye steak in over ten years. I pretty much think about that every stinking day.
Before that we had good steaks at least twice a week.
I was able to get at least an occasional imported rib eye and T bone, or chuck for pot roast, until Aldis bought out the cheap grocery store I relied on. Now even stew meat is unaffordable, twice the price of burger, and the stores treat Chuck roast meat as if it is steak. Oxtails that used to be cheap are now running 12 bucks a pound.
Shanks, a normally cheap product that make a great substitute for ox tail and which I used to braise aren’t even available here at any price. The stores are always out.
Haven’t even seen sirloin in a year now.
Used to be when times were tough, there were local butcher shops where you could at least get something even if it wasn’t pretty. You could by heart or bones for soup so at least if you were poor you could still satisfy a craving for beef flavor.
I have been trying to get beef ribs now to make soup but they are sold out. The butchering is done somewhere far off and the choices when the meat gets here are extremely limited.
The drought and land prices and regs and bureaucratic clusterfoxtrots caused by the global warming crowd’s war on cattle and traditional energy sources, and the inheritance and death taxes over the years have rendered the dwindling number of US farmers unable to meet demand even at these elevated prices. Instead of family farms that used to grow a broad variety of animals and crops and which could weather difficult times by changing their focus, we got corporate farmers only interested in growing corn for ethanol.
If you couldn’t afford much meat, you could at least get vegetables reasonably, and stretch it. No more. Vegetables are expensive. Even beans are high. Garden seeds and starts are sky high. The only good thing is the kids are learning to forage for weeds like my grandparents did in the Depression.
The bad thing is the politicians have never had to. They live lives of complete ignorance and ease, spending what we don’t have and devaluing our currency making things worse.
Pork is where it was a decade ago, as is chicken.