Producers aren’t seeing any benefit as beef prices rise, say producers.
“The price correlation between retail beef product and live cattle used to be very high but for several years now the two have been diverging,” said Callum Sears, president of the Western Stock Growers Association.
“We need to know why that is. Consumers are paying high prices without knowing the breakdown of where their dollar is going. This is a disservice to both the consumer and the beef producer.”
Brendyn Elliot, one of the owners of Belvin Angus in Central Alberta, said after the drought caused a challenging 2021, some beef producers in the province may go out of business if they don’t get more return on cattle.
“Feed prices are going nuts, fuel prices have gone extremely high. The ranchers are very resilient, but with some operations, it’s getting to the point where a change needs to be made,” said Elliot, who is the Zone 7 director for the Western Stock Growers Association.
“There aren’t a lot of guys who can say they were profitable last year. The drought was a major hit to everybody in Western Canada, but there needs to be more value coming from the end user coming all the way back through the supply chain to the source.”
Elliot said the main underlying issue is that there isn’t enough competition in the packing industry.
“The packing plant owns the cattle for 12 hours and they make all of the money on it,” said Elliot.
Last week, the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association called on the provincial and federal governments to investigate the rising price of beef and who is benefitting from it.
Alberta’s NDP made that same call to governments on Friday.
“These price increases are pushing an important source of protein out of reach for families and they are harming Alberta’s beef producers as well. So who is benefiting from these high prices? Where is the money going?” said Heather Sweet, NDP Critic for Agriculture, Forestry, and Rural Economic Development.
“We need to get to the bottom of it, and we need the provincial and federal governments to bring their authority to bear on this problem.”
Alberta Beef Producers received a grant from the province last year to look into this.
Dr. Melanie Wowk, Alberta Beef Producers chair said COVID-19 shone a light on the industry’s supply chain challenges “and we continue to see impacts in today’s markets, putting immense pressure on beef producers and consumers.”
“Recognizing that work needs to be done to further investigate the issue, industry and government have initiated an Alberta beef competitiveness study to understand the best approach to building resiliency in our industry. We look forward to the results which will be available later this year,” said Wowk.
sean.mcintosh@reddeeradvocate.com
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