Oh, they absolutely WILL lower their prices. When the market dictates a price of X, and a rancher tries to sell at 2X, he WILL lower his prices or he will sell NOTHING and go out of business very quickly.
77 cattle Ranchers go bust every day. I buy halves and slaughtering, aging, processing costs went up, so my supplier built their own processing plant. That was a 3 million (IIRC) dollar gamble. Ranchers are trying to stay afloat. For proud hardworking generational Ranchers this is heartbreaking.
I am seeing various prime cuts of meat at my grocery store on ‘remainder’ [ after having been marked down as on Sale ] priced at $25 and higher. No one is buying the meat because no one can afford it.
The market prices are simply pricing people our of meat, leading to still higher prices and higher waste in grocery stores.
Beyond Meat seems to be making a come back - at least on the stock market.