In today’s beef buzz, Senior Farm And Ranch Director Ron Hays speaks with Randy Blach of CattleFax and featured speaker at the 2025 Texas Cattle Feeders Convention in Ft Worth. Blach emphasized that 2025 has brought “profitability we’ve not seen anything like in every class of cattle.” He credited several contributing factors, including favorable market conditions and trade dynamics. “There’s a lot of things that have gone on that have benefited the market,” he said, pointing to tariff environments that limited imports and the “screw worm situation,” which closed off “a million head” of Mexican cattle from entering the U.S. These disruptions have tightened supply and boosted prices — a welcome shift for producers. Blach said “I love it for our producers, they needed a payday and really our cow calf producers needed a good payday and they are finally getting one.”
Blach noted that cow-calf producers, in particular, are “in the driver’s seat” in this current cycle. However, he observed that herd expansion remains modest. “We’re still not seeing very aggressive expansion,” he said. While moisture conditions improved more than expected early in the year, long-term weather variability has kept producers cautious. “This has been a nip and tuck deal now for several years,” Blach explained, citing the persistent La Niña pattern that has made ranchers hesitant to rebuild aggressively. Despite better rainfall and improved confidence, he said, “it’s still not a situation that we’ve got a major increase in supplies coming at us anytime soon.”
When asked whether he was surprised that producers haven’t moved faster to rebuild herds, Blach admitted, “I am a little bit surprised that we haven’t picked up the pace a little bit.” He attributed this hesitation to economic pressures and uncertainty. “Interest rates for most of these folks [are] around 8% or higher,” Blach noted, adding that “that’s a big deal when you’re talking about a $3,500 or $4,000 cow.” High borrowing costs, combined with unpredictable market forces, have made producers more cautious. “Uncertainty surrounding these markets tends to keep people a little more reserved in the decision-making process,” he said.
Discussing the current screwworm outbreak, Blach acknowledged its complicated effects on the industry. He called the decision to restrict Mexican cattle imports “a policy decision that was made — and you can’t argue with it.” Protecting the domestic herd from screwworm infestation, he said, “is essential,” because “it’d be a management nightmare for us if we get it here.” Still, the restriction has had clear economic consequences. “Cattle on feed numbers in the state of Texas are down a quarter of a million head,” Blach said, emphasizing that the situation has created “a big impact in this region of the country.”
Looking at the broader picture, Blach said the reduced supply chain is affecting “every segment of the industry.” With fewer Mexican cattle available, “we don’t have as many cattle that we’d typically be turning out on fall and winter grazing,” he explained. That shortage flows through to “grow yards, finishing yards, and packers,” all of which have fewer animals to handle. Despite these challenges, Blach emphasized that the overall market effect has been “a positive market ramification for producers, not a negative one.” As the industry continues navigating tight supplies, policy constraints, and weather uncertainty, Blach’s message was clear — 2025 has been a long-awaited and well-deserved upturn for America’s cattle producers.
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 for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
