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๐ฅ Hero of the Day - Sampson Family Farm, Live Oak FL
In 2015 they became the first farm in Florida certified grassfed by A Greener World. Jeff and Janet Sampson had been ranching for 30 years before that. The whole story is at SampsonFamilyFarm.com
Black Angus born, raised, and finished on their own North Florida pasture. Rotational grazing with Katahdin sheep. No hormones. No antibiotics. No animal by-products.
Two generations. One standard: the beef they sell is the beef they feed their own family.
Rancher Direct Certified.
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com retweeted
The cattle market is close to the best it has ever been, and the man selling into it says there is still only one way in.
Bar V 6 Ranch runs about 1,500 mama cows on 5,000 acres in Rogers and Craig counties, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma farm real estate averaged $2,620 an acre in 2026. Five thousand acres at that average is $13.1 million before the first cow.
"You either got to inherit it or steal it or marry into it."
He is not joking. Borrow for the cow and borrow for the land at the same time, he says, and it will not work. It does not pencil.
What he controls is the calendar. Spring calves March 1 to April 30, weaned the last week of October, shipped mid-December after a 60-day wean. Fall calves September into October, shipped mid-July.
Both sets sell the same week at the Week of the Rockies, as one full group, while the spring calves are still standing in his pasture.
His father started with a goal of 100 cows, built the place to 2,000, and has been gone eight years.
He says he wants a young generation in it when he is gone.
Britain lost more than nine in ten of its slaughter plants since the 1970s, from about 2,500 to 200, and the rate for the inspector on the line rose again for 2026/27.
An Official Veterinarian bills ยฃ79.60 an hour, up 20.8 percent. A Meat Hygiene Inspector bills ยฃ48.50. The plant pays both, so the inspection that makes the meat legal is a cost the slaughterhouse carries hourly.
The ยฃ4 million fund meant to keep the small plants alive closed its window in September 2024 with no successor round.
Christopher Price chairs the Abattoir Sector Group. More than 150 organisations signed his letter asking the Prime Minister to treat local slaughter as essential infrastructure. His line: "You cannot have British meat without the infrastructure to process it."
The survey reached 850 farmers. Two thirds struggled to find a plant. A third had watched one close. 43 percent could not sell meat locally if theirs shut.
In the States the federal inspector comes out of USDA appropriations, and the wait for a kill date at a small inspected plant still runs weeks to months. Britain bills the plant for the inspector's hours, so every closure lands the same fixed cost on fewer kill floors.
Mike Muili ranched 50 years in Montana before 45 first-time heifers all settled, producer reported.
A closed plant takes a route to market. It does not take the calf crop. Calf crop is the lever BetterFedFoods.com moves.
The four biggest packers kill roughly eight in ten fed cattle. A rancher's second option is a kill floor he can drive to. When that plant closes, the bid stops being a choice.
๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com retweeted
Iโm a small producerโฆ
But we allowed this centralization by feeding it
We can end it by starving it
We need to stop complaining and start doing something about it
Iโm doing my part
A beef and bison plant in Idaho Falls that opened in November 2022 shut down in April 2026. It is now for sale by court order.
The building at 1096 E Iona Road covers 90,000 square feet on 12 acres, rated at 500 head a day. Three 660-foot boning lines, two 1,200-horsepower boilers, case-ready packaging, and a wastewater plant that returns clarified water to the city sewer.
It shipped to Costco, Walmart, Sam's Club, Kroger, H-E-B and Sprouts.
Keen-Summit Capital Partners is marketing it with Gordon Brothers and M&M Equipment on behalf of Ampleo Turnaround and Restructuring, the court-appointed receiver over Intermountain Packing. Offers are considered as received. The sale needs court approval, and the assets can still go to auction.
Idaho gave up its state meat inspection program on July 1, 1981. USDA keeps it on the designated list, so everything killed there is federally inspected and nothing else is available.
A plant built for 500 head a day became a machinery listing in 41 months.
JBS and Nigeria's government signed a memorandum of understanding in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024: $2.5 billion, six factories, five years. Twenty-three months later it is still unpublished.
๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com
JBS said three were poultry, two beef, one pork, and that Nigeria would ensure the economic, sanitary and regulatory conditions the project needs to be viable.
On Tuesday in Ibadan, a farmer and civil society coalition asked the government to suspend it until the memorandum and land allocations are public. Whole Planet Initiative's Adebukola Adekola said Freedom of Information requests went unanswered.
Seyi Olawuyi of the Youth in Agroecology and Restoration Network cited unnamed reports that Niger State pledged about 1.2 million hectares of land.
In June, JBS USA chief Wesley Batista Filho said "JBS USA is investing heavily in the United States and in the future of food production." That month it announced the Souderton, Pennsylvania beef plant would close, about 1,500 jobs, and a Memphis plant, 200 more.
JBS is one of four packers that slaughter 80 to 85 percent of US fed cattle. It publishes its quarterly numbers. It has not published what it promised Nigeria.
The packer will not show the contract. A rancher can show you his numbers.
Huntley Ranch fed 227 steers on the tubs and ran 228 as a control, 16 pounds more gain in 45 days.
Gain you can measure is what BetterFedFoods.com is for.
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com retweeted
Sunrise over the mountains this morning, cold enough that everybody was bunched up, and every cow on the place looked happy about it.
Beautiful morning. Doesn't get any better than that.
We're still on fence repair after yesterday's mess, but that's the day. A great day in North Idaho. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll talk to you soon.
Your rancher,
Jason Hanley | 208-714-0478
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com retweeted
In February 1980 the federal dietary guidelines told Americans to avoid too much fat and cholesterol, choose lean meat, and use eggs and organ meats such as liver in moderation.
The tenth edition, released January 7, 2026, lists eggs, poultry, seafood and red meat among the protein foods to eat at every meal, at 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight.
Nearly forty-six years separate those two sentences.
Dr. Ken Berry was asked why the guidelines drifted so far from what humans should eat. He named the funders: Kellogg's, Kraft Heinz, Mondelฤz, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola. "That's who's buying all the textbooks."
The receipts back him. Between 2011 and 2017 the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics took $486,335 from PepsiCo, $477,577 from Coca-Cola and $273,272 from Kellogg USA, per an analysis of its IRS filings. That is the association registered dietitians belong to.
The one number that never moved is the 10 percent saturated fat cap. The same edition names butter, full-fat dairy and beef tallow among healthy fats from whole foods.
Berry's read on the pill side is the same model. Managed disease keeps a customer for life.
Clip from @doctorkiltz
John Boozman chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee. In August he voted against the beef labeling amendment his own committee adopted.
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Thune's amendment carried all 11 committee Democrats and 6 of the panel's 12 Republicans. Marshall, Moran, Tuberville, McConnell and Justice voted with the chairman against it.
Four people carry it from here. Boozman, Klobuchar, Thompson and Craig have staff negotiating this month, then sit down themselves Nov 9.
The House never voted on it. Hageman and Khanna filed an MCOOL amendment in April. House Rules blocked it.
When the WTO ruled for Canada and Mexico, retaliation was set at $781 million and $228 million a year. Congress repealed the label in December 2015.
Thune's version gives USDA and USTR 180 days to find a WTO-compliant path, then one year to run the label. No penalty if it slips.
Bill Bullard of R-CALF USA: "American cattle ranchers deserve the opportunity to compete for consumers who want American beef."
None of it is law. The label sits one committee amendment deep, while 300,000 metric tons of discounted lean trim comes in for 90 days and no package has to say where the animal was born.
Washington can move a label deadline. It cannot move your feed bill.
NBO3 reports up to 10 percent better feed-to-gain on the same ration, producer reported.
Cost of gain you control is what BetterFedFoods.com is for.
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com retweeted
A Georgia rancher added two words to a mule's name in the sale catalog and turned a plain animal into the story every buyer repeated to his friends.
The mule went in the catalog as Shark Tank Otis, named after his run on the show. The same animal people had walked past all morning now had buyers asking how a cowboy bought a mule with TV money.
Wealthy Cowboy's guest made the point plainly on this week's episode. Whether you are moving registered bulls or a phone charger, people buy the story first.
The commodity side of this industry spent fifty years stripping the story out of cattle. Animals sell through the ring by weight, hide color, and a number on a card.
Ranchers keep roughly 40 cents of every dollar a shopper hands over at the meat case. Four packers handle about 80 percent of the kill. That spread has been widening for decades.
The 2 a.m. calf pulls in the snow live in the real story. So does the hay put up the day before the rain, and the same family working the same ground for four generations.
That story carries the only value in this business a packer cannot price by the pound.
Selling direct puts the story back in the hands of the rancher who lived it.
Your rancher,
Jason Hanley | 208-714-0478
SAVE BEEF ๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com retweeted
The house you paid off can still evict you through the mailbox.
A homeowner who has held the same place for almost 15 years wrote in that the property tax notice just added 600 dollars a year, the home insurance notice added 60 a month, and the propane supplier sent a letter saying its price was doubling. One tank refill cost 1,000 dollars.
The mortgage is the small bill now. The yearly cost of standing on land you already bought is the one that decides whether you stay.
The wider numbers say the same thing. Home insurance now runs higher than the average property tax bill in about two thirds of American counties, and county average premiums are up roughly 45 percent after inflation over ten years.
Marketplace health coverage went from an average 113 dollars a month to 178. For subsidized enrollees the yearly bill more than doubled, 888 dollars to 1,904.
Property taxes averaged 4,427 dollars nationally in 2025, up 3.7 percent. For a lot of rural households the insurance line is now bigger than the tax line.
A Homestead Journey collected this stack of letters from people living it, and the part that lands is where the ones who cannot cover the mailbox bills end up. Trailers. Campers. Cars.
A 2026 review counted 46,771 people sleeping in vehicles across 38 western states. The January 2025 federal count put 745,652 Americans homeless, 266,320 of them unsheltered.
Land is the last thing worth owning and the hardest thing to keep.
Your rancher,
Jason Hanley | 208-714-0478
Mike Callicrate said on X this week that Colorado passed LL and MM to fund better meals for kids, and that nearly a year later not one Colorado school had ordered Colorado beef.
Two districts have it on the record.
South Routt, in Routt County, holds a $7,700 Colorado Local Food Program grant for this school year. It buys local beef from Snowden Ranch for chili, nachos, tacos and spaghetti sauce, and brats from Finch Ranch Artisan Meats.
Morgan County RE-3 took $16,000 from the same program in January and buys ground beef from Colorado Craft Beef in Akron, processed and delivered by Mike's Meat Market in Sterling, for about 2,500 students a day.
Neither district needed a state beef contract. A grant and a rancher down the road did it.
steamboatpilot.com/news/soutโฆ
$7,700 and $16,000. Not one load of feeder cattle.
Local school beef runs on a nutrition director who knows a rancher and a grant small enough to miss.
Morgan County RE-3 spends its $16,000 with a ranch in Akron and a plant in Sterling. Both are in Colorado.
๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com
Every pound of that school beef was a calf that had to be bred first.
Tony Phipps ranched thirty years near Jordan, Montana. He reported 78 heifers and 76 bred, in a year vets expected 20 percent open.
A heifer that settles when feed is short is what BetterFedFoods.com is for.
Nineteen bulls went to Ada, Oklahoma on JB Mooney's rig. Two belonged to Dale Brisby: Bulldog, lot 73, and Beaver Dog, lot 74. Red Dog stayed home because his last few trips had come up weaker than normal.
Dale keeps 10 bulls and two bull riders at home, so two had to sell. He put his floors out loud before the bidding, Bulldog over $5,000 and Beaver Dog over $4,000.
A floor only holds if the seller has somewhere else to put the animal. A bull can go home and keep bucking for the next rodeo.
The lots ahead of his set the range. Blake Sharp's bull brought $4,700. The next one $7,100. A big horned bull $5,600. Another $8,500.
Bulldog cleared the floor at $5,500 and sold.
Beaver Dog topped at $3,600. Dale bought him back and loaded him for the trip home. "Probably should have let him go for 3,600, but I thought, man, I could buck it for that."
The rig left Ada with one of his bulls still on it. @dalebrisby
The bid prices one afternoon. A bull's worth gets settled where he works.
LaRue ranches at 6,500 feet. Producers on this ration reported 50% less PAPs, brisket disease that hits fast gaining bulls first.
A bull that holds up where you run him is what BetterFedFoods.com is for.
A price a rancher can refuse is only as good as his second option. A bucking bull earns his keep at home. A calf has one truck out.
BeefMaps connects ranchers selling beef direct with the people eating it. That is the second option.
๐บ๐ธ BeefMaps.com
