Posted on 12/11/2021 5:27:56 AM PST by Sir_Humphrey
Prices for prime cuts of meat are up by as much as 25% with farmers and consumers taking the hit.
Tom Eikman, owner of Eikman’s Processing in Seward, Illinois, a small-sized, third-generation meat processor, said that a shortage of skilled meat handlers and rising costs are plaguing the industry.
“We need those individuals that can take a front quarter of a beef and can break that down into ribeyes and chuck roasts and ground beef. We’ve been constantly trying to find that labor source and striking out,” Eikman said.
Eikman has a theory that many of the longtime guys who did the skilled meat processing jobs retired early because of the pandemic. Workers make $18 an hour at Amazon. Some are not keen on standing on their feet in icy facilities, lifting 70-pound meat carcasses for less money.
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
Central_va.......... is that you?
Pay more and they won’t be needed
I think the standing part is the least of it. They’re basically working in a freezer. Doing hard manual labor. Sitting or standing it’s an awful job that anybody that can find something better will avoid.
“At this point I am just going to go into the frugal mode I lived by in my early 20s - cutting expenses anywhere and everywhere I can, and eating a cheap but sufficient diet.”
Amen to that. I spent all of my 20s and much of my 30s pretty much broke (the first year I ever made over $10K was the year I turned 33, and there were 3 more sub-10K years before I was 40). Probably less fun now, but not unprecedented.
There are some expenses I would cut in a heartbeat, specifically television, but my wife won’t hear of it.
Perfect job for a robot: repetitive, dangerous, physically demanding.
In 1980 meat cutters in Oklahoma City went on strike for $27,000 a year (about 13.50 an hour). So $18.00 is more than they are making now and the price of beef goes up 25%? Producers are making between $1.35 and $1.65 a lb on the hoof. Carcass yield is about 42% making finished beef about $3.50 a lb in that component. Cutting is $0.50 or less a lb.
Having less labor and higher prices does not make any more beef so why the price gouging? Because they can.
The same reason is why dollar a board foot lumber won’t go away either, because a younger generation has not bought lumber at 40 to 50 cents just a few years ago and interest rates are 2 to 3%. The usurious prices are being paid, there is no resistance and they will stay high just because they can.
Likewise the loaf from home gang has spread the cancer of their high wages to rural areas and homogenized the nation to the effect of higher wages and their driving up costs for the rest of us.
It happened fast and we are deep in the soup out here in fly-over country. The broth is spoiled.
This is not a minimum wage issue but a supply and demand issue. There is a finite supply of workers. If you're offering minimum wage and Amazon down the street is offering $18 and hour then you have nobody to blame but yourself if you can't attract a workforce.
Big Agriculture dictates the meat prices, Eikman explained. His processing plant could undercut them in the short term and sell steaks below their market rates. However, word would quickly get out and Eikman would run out of the inventory.
So his hands are tied. He has no choice but to fall in line and charge market rates, he argued.
So, they have to keep prices high to keep from running out of inventory? Sounds reasonable to me.
That’s capitalism for you, excuses to bank windfall profits by weeding out competition. Sounds a lot like a monopoly to me.
“The entire food chain including genetics may need to be redesigned to standardize animal dimensions more narrowly.”
Pork is already headed down that road. About a year ago pork producers were having a problem because of the pandemic lockdown. Hogs were staying at the farm and getting too big for a system designed to handle one size of pig varying by only a few pounds.
I think they can automate it someday. Lumber is now cut from logs by computer. Computer decides what dimensions cam most efficiently be cut from a given log. Human checks result before cutting begins but usually does not have to intervene. If one day you need more 4x4s than 2x4s that can be programed in.
Doodle,
Minimum wage DOES have a measurable effect, though. Bezo’s doesn’t pay $18.00 per hour out of the goodness of his liberal heart. Amazon pays $18.00 an hour for an unglamous not terribly technical job because IT is competing against unskilled minimum wage jobs itself.
The meat production issue, of course, is a multifaceted problem with no simplistic answer.
Transport costs. You forgot those.
L
“Oh PLEASE, it can’t be that hard, considering that Biden has opened to floodgates to all who want to come here.”
Are you insane? The majority of the birder jumpers will be welfare recipients for decades. They grew up not really learning any strong work ethic in regards to Industry.
And he also doesn't sit there wringing his hands whining about how nobody wants to work for him. He does what he needs to. The meatpacker should do the same.
“Almost enough to make you turn vegetarian.....almost”
When I got out of the military I was an athletic man with an athletic diet and I had to learn portion control fairly quickly cuz I was not burning calories as before.
Have tried a number of things, the most cost-saving thing that I’ve ever done in regards to food has been portion control, and it helps kept me healthy, and there are very few foods that I cannot eat because with portion control it works out that way.
It’s not a diet. When I eat out about 1/4 of the portions served actually get eaten and the rest is taken home in the box.
After a while portion control becomes self-control naturally. Mindfulness is also necessary.
just saying... it’s a mitigation strategy.
A few years ago I butchered some laying hens that were getting old/unproductive.
I shall be forever grateful I don’t have to do that for a living.
Perhaps paying the invaders $450,000 to sit on their butts discourages them from working?
“Pretty sure I don’t want some unskilled Haitian illegal cutting my steaks....”
You could always order bulk from a some place like Central Meats, All Things Pig... but then... Cold Storage becomes an issue and with the possibility of storms in winter & electrical generation if the power were to fail is a whole other issue.
What can you do? Buy jerky!
My in-laws hunt a lot. And they said when things go bad there’s going alot of hunters knocking the game down and there’s not going to be a lot of that game leftover either.
Keep a flexible larder.
One of my kids bought a quarter cow from a local farmer, who cut it up into steaks and chops and such. It’s now in a big freezer in their garage.
Indeed here in LA even the car washes have cut their staff in half and increased their price for car wash to $25.00 to $30.00 for the deluxe deal.
Now the quarter car washes have lines %3.00.
Lets see.....
Didn’t quite a few, if not most, of the big ranchers in this country recently bring up the fact that the Chinese have purchased most of the large meat processing plants and came together to try and compete
Ranchers Across The Country Raise Over $300 Million To Build Beef Plant In Effort To Compete With Industry Power
https://dailycaller.com/2021/10/17/nebraska-ranchers-beef-slaughterhouse-united-states-department-agricuture/
Unhappy with prices, ranchers look to build own meat plants ..... https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/unhappy-prices-ranchers-build-meat-plants-80618434
Interesting tidbit from the article.....DES MOINES, Iowa — Like other ranchers across the country, Rusty Kemp for years grumbled about rock-bottom prices paid for the cattle he raised in central Nebraska, even as the cost of beef at grocery stores kept climbing......So, ranchers cost go up, their ability to sell goes down, the end consumer pays more. Where’s the money going? Who is gouging?
I recently purchased from a local farmer. For one, the meat is totally different than what you get in a store. I’m about to go 1/3rds on another one. Total price for the cow has gone up about $200 in the last 4 months or so. Of one the 1/3 in the deal knows the guy raising the cows and was told that their feed cost have gone up over 400%, along with other costs. Where’s the money going? Who’s getting rich? If the costs are rising due to the market or circumstances beyond anyone’s control, well, there isn’t much anyone can do about that. If costs are rising because of market manipulation or something nefarious, then something can be done.
Shockingly, so many of these things seem to lead back to China or Chinese corporations buying up anything and everything, with enthusiastic American sellers.
On a side note, if anyone on here or anywhere is still buying Smithfield products, you are aiding, abetting and enriching the enemy .....
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/china-buys-smithfield-foods-owned-wh-group
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