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Consumers are not cutting down on meat consumption

A Wisconsin agriculture official says consumers are not doing what they usually do when it comes to meat consumption.

Jeffrey Swenson with the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection tells Brownfield beef demand normally slacks off after the first of the year. “The holiday period is a period of high demand. People start to pay back their credit card debt that they accumulated over the holidays, so we always see a pullback in beef demand after the first of the year. That hasn’t happened this year.”

Swenson says that unexpected early 2025 demand is helping support farm prices. “We entered the first part of this year with a record high in cattle prices, and a lot of the sales barns were selling cattle for the highest that they ever have.”

Swenson says it’s unclear how long that will last. “Packers aren’t necessarily profitable right now so we don’t know how long those prices will hold, and of course there’s the potential for volatility.”

Swenson says when visiting the sales barns, he’s finding buyers and sellers are optimistic because consumers have not pushed back on beef prices or switched to other proteins.  He says pork producers are also more profitable now than they have been in the last few years, in part because the U.S. swine harvest is 7.7% lower than a year ago.

AUDIO: Jeff Swenson discusses several livestock issues with Brownfield’s Larry Lee