> fewer heads but relatively stable 

Had read something that says this has been normal for ~50 years or so since the carcass size keeps increasing with breeding/nutrition practices

I think I found this when looking into why Bison aren't a good substitute in areas where cattle won't forage, since there's less usable meat on an otherwise larger animal

justin_shocknet

I thought there was a lot of meat production in the United States, but from what I read, that's not the case.

`related`: **60% of imported American BEEF comes from Australia, Canada, and Brazil 🥩** *https://stacker.news/items/1267589*

![](https://m.stacker.news/117153)
*https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detail?chartId=112657*

![](https://m.stacker.news/117154)
*https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa*

Consumption doesn’t seem to be going up, which makes it look like it’s just the price rising even though demand isn’t.

0xbitcoiner

Sandman

BlokchainB

@Signal312 this and other factors have caused meat prices to skyrocket.

DP0604

charts_and_numbers

Other than money printing, I'm not sure [what else might be going on with beef prices](https://stacker.news/items/1280584/r/k00b), which got me curious.

It looks like inventory has dropped a lot, but I'd guess we are producing the same or more pounds of beef just with fewer heads.

![](https://m.stacker.news/117137)

I couldn't find a chart over all of the US, but in Texas at least, that looks about right; a lot fewer heads but relatively stable production weight over time.

![](https://m.stacker.news/117140)

![](https://m.stacker.news/117141)

Where's the beef? Texas is the answer.

![](https://m.stacker.news/117138)

![](https://m.stacker.news/117139)

(I wonder what kind of alligator dodging cattle they're farming out in Florida.)

This all from the USDA's website, which has [a nifty tool for survey visualization](https://www.nass.usda.gov/Data_Visualization/Commodity/index.php) and a bunch of publications with more data.