Don't know how old you are
@cowman82 , but I too remember the days of $.10-.20 cull cows, and feeder steers bringing less than $.50..... I remember seeing the replacement cattle in the $2-3,000 a head in the mid 2010's , and then the price drop as more came available and things went through the swing.
The record low inventory and record low retainment of replacement heifers, the droughts, have all gone through these same cycles..... Our huge increase in exports to China especially has caused higher prices and lower inventory faster than some of the previous cycles...
But as the world economy gets more intertwined, and the inflation rate gets worse and worse in what the average person can manage, even with the increased wages, it will get to a point where people will not be able to afford things...
Add to that the unrest with the different countries vying for control over the world... hostilities that are being pushed, that we as a nation are getting more and more "weak kneed" and they see as potential for a very real possibility for takeover if we do not get back to where we are an important player in things... AND different countries now going away from the US dollar as the "world's currency" will bring things to a halt and possibly even put us in worse shape than we have ever been in.
And there is one more thing that many do not see... the younger generation of people OVERALL, do not see the same value of hard, sweaty, physical labor as a way to "get ahead". It is a different mindset with the technology today; and the levels of people wanting to just push buttons to make things happen. They are looking at the whole "fake meat" and being able to "create" food in a lab and mass produce it, as the "modern way to go" and it will save the planet and all that claptrap BS..... It will not save the planet with using 10 times the resources in order to create this stuff that will stop the animals from polluting the planet...
The "age of the Jetson's" with being able to take a pill to get your total nutrition, is fast becoming a reality.... yet there is more and more unrest and unhappiness in the world, and it is a sign that we are getting more and more away from what we need in our lives to both live and thrive.... that things like physical work and toil in the soil is good for the body AND the soul.... and that by letting things "go back to nature" and all this gobbledy gook, is showing me that people have not yet learned that they cannot go forward without learning from the past... yet the current thoughts of the governing class is to get everyone on board with this idea of the government knows best and we should learn to "trust them" to have our best interests at heart. And that the past should be erased.
There are advantages to the modern age of farming, the equipment and things that have made "one man" able to farm thousands of acres instead of barely managing to farm his 160 acre piece..... But each new technology brings a new set of problems... which in turn brings a new set of "solutions"... This also brings in another set of influencers to the cycle of cattle as we have seen over the last 100 years.
We will see another drop in the cattle cycle... it is at it's peak now, MIGHT even last for another year or 2... but when it does crash, it will be worse than the last one because the younger generation of today does not want to see that it happens this way, and the prices of things are so inflated that spending 100,000 for a pickup that will NEVER be able to last long enough to even make it "pay for its self", so a person will never get out of the debt cycle that has become a way of life now.
When this does crash, the foreign countries that have been buying up farmland.... namely China and such, ESPECIALLY around and near military bases and strategic areas of production and distribution... they will dictate to us how we will live as they are taking over what has been one of the best places in the world to live and BE FREE. Ask anyone that has escaped communist and socialist rule in other countries.... We are headed that way...
When the cattle cycle swings, with the other influences that were not near as prevalent in the past ones, those that are still able to own cattle, and land, will be at the mercy of controlling interests that will TELL you what you can raise, what you can get for your product, and how to do things.
With the amount of debt now, and the riding high on cattle prices, when it drops, there will be those with money that will come in and own things and those that will become the "serf's" to do the work.... Many will lose so much when these prices fall.... and they will.
