At CattleCon 2025, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays had the chance to catch up with the CEO of CattleFax, Randy Blach, and talk about the rises and falls of select and prime grades of beef. Yesterday, they discussed the strengths and challenges of the beef industry.
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Over the last fifteen years or so, beef production has taken a turn towards consistent quality, and recently, has gone a step further. Prime-grade beef is being produced as much as or more often than select.
“The select number will continue to shrink; we just don’t need as many select carcasses,” Blach said. “There are still some brands that use that lower grading product; some of the pre-cooked items still use some of the lower grading product, but that is not where our industry needs to focus.”
The industry experienced a “war on fat” during the eighties and nineties, beef was nearly all no-roll or select. Blach described Wal-Mart Superstores as the biggest individual beef retailer saying that it changed from a Select Program to an Angus Program about fifteen years ago.
“It has been great to see the industry get focused on the right things,” he said. “That consistency has been so much better; we still have a lot of room to make it better, but it is so much better than it was for a long time.”
Blach described the tremendous differences in profitability across regions of the U.S. and described key criteria consistent with high-return producers. “They don’t cheat on nutrition. They don’t cheat on genetics, and they focus on advantages from a marketing standpoint.
He said that the demand of consumers is top of mind when these producers are making their genetic selections and so is the market. Through value-based marketing grid programs, Blach described a consistent $60 per hundred price spread each week on feeder calves.
“These markets are a lot smarter than we give them credit for,” he said. “They are putting a value on all of these different attributes that we have coming through the system.”
He said that commodity cattle lacking health care – vaccines, castration, and dehorning – are bringing prices consistent with the lack of input into their care.
“Efficiency is key, now,” he added. “The purchase price on the animals is so high, so we really have to mind our Ps and Qs. I would say, at this stage of the cattle cycle, make sure you aren’t betting your whole wad. These markets can be absolutely crazy volatile. We have record fund participation in feeder cattle and live cattle futures, so if anything spooks that, these markets can go down a lot in a short period of time. Make sure we are keeping some options or LRP or some hedges on enough of these cattle that we aren’t disappointed by an outside factor that we had to deal with.”
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 at the top of the story for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
