In today’s Beef Buzz, senior farm and ranch broadcaster Ron Hays features comments from livestock industry consultant Dr. Nevil Speer, who spoke during the spring conference of the US Meat Export Federation in Oklahoma City about how the beef business transformed itself from years of stagnation into one of agriculture’s strongest consumer-driven success stories.
From Stagnation to Growth
Speer pointed to a difficult stretch for the beef business between 1980 and the late 1990s. “Between 1980 and 1998 the beef industry gained $6 in new spending, $6 cumulative over 18, 19 years,” Speer said. “Pork and poultry got $106.”
He said the challenge becomes even clearer when inflation is considered. “Let’s remind ourselves during that time what else was happening. It’s inflation, very much an inflationary period,” Speer said. “So actually the industry was going backwards in terms of real dollars coming in to the industry.”
For Speer, the issue was simple: industries cannot grow without new revenue. “You can’t grow an industry, you can’t grow a business without top-line growth,” he said. “No new revenue, no growth, that played out in a real way.”
He noted that live steer prices reflected those struggles as well. “If you look at the live steer price, Kansas basis during that time, the change in price actually went down, and again, this is an inflationary period,” Speer said.
A Turning Point Around 2000
According to Speer, momentum finally began to shift around the turn of the century. “What a turnaround,” he said. “We started getting some traction. Everybody had chicken fatigue, the Atkins diet, those kinds of things.”
Then came another major catalyst. “COVID, guess what happened? Consumers rediscovered beef and how good it actually is,” Speer said. “That’s huge.”
He pointed to stronger consumer spending as evidence of the turnaround. “We had a 14% jump last year in terms of spending,” Speer said. “The growth is real. More dollars coming into the industry, it really, really matters. That is not an accident.”
At the center of that growth, he said, is consumer demand. “We’ve got a consumer good, and if we don’t have consumer spending, we can’t grow the business,” Speer said. “Ultimately, when we start talking about what’s going on in our business, it’s a shift in demand.”
Speer said the long-term numbers show how dramatic that demand shift has become. “2025 versus 2010, we basically added about $2.25 per pound in real terms, and that’s over 30 million additional people versus 2010,” he said. “This is what drives market demand. This started 40 years ago. This didn’t just happen.”
Beef Winning More of the Consumer Dollar
Speer said beef’s position compared to competing proteins has changed significantly. “If you just look at total sales, 57% over the last 52 weeks, and it’s been that way for about two years,” he said. “But it’s the sales growth we’re getting — 74 cents of every new dollar.”
He contrasted that with the industry’s struggles decades earlier. “Remember, 1980 to 1998, that was the other way around,” Speer said. “We weren’t getting any new growth. This is dramatic.”
The stronger demand environment has translated into historically strong cattle markets. “We’ve had a run here of 272 weeks,” Speer said. “Of better prices year over year, we’ve missed four weeks.”
He said the current cycle also feels different to producers. “They talk about, ‘Yeah, my checkbook feels super fat right now,’” Speer said. “They also respect it this time. It’s a different feel than it was last time.”
Why Quality Changed Everything
For Speer, the biggest difference in today’s beef business comes down to one thing: quality. “To me, the big difference is quality,” he said.
He credited the beef checkoff and the industry’s willingness to confront quality problems head-on. “If the checkoff did one thing — wait, two things,” Speer said with a laugh, “helped with exports… it also funded the first beef quality audit and the subsequent ones, where we finally documented what was wrong with our business.”
“Beef was too tough, wonky, too fat,” he said. “This is why people wouldn’t buy our product. They’re not going to spend more money.”
That effort, Speer argued, laid the foundation for today’s stronger consumer confidence in beef. “We’re now average in the Choice Plus category,” he said. “Remember when we used to say, ‘Oh yeah, they grade Choice. Who cares?’ We’re in a whole new realm.” “This is what’s bringing consumers back,” Speer said. “It’s the quality and the consistency, and this did not just happen.”
He credited better genetics, management, and a stronger focus on what consumers actually want. “We’ve gotten better at genetics, and we’ve gotten better at management, and we’re starting to listen to consumers,” Speer said. “It makes all the difference in the world. And it is the anchor, truly.”
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR above for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
