Two cattle ranchers called low beef production a “crisis” for Americans and warned on Fox News that major meat-packing companies are now beginning to invest in bugs.
National Black Farmers Association Founder John Boyd Jr. and cattle rancher Shad Sullivan appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss the decline within the cattle industry in the United States. Fox host Laura Ingraham began by questioning Boyd Jr. on how “bad” the issue could get for the average American who consumes beef. Boyd said that not only are herds significantly “depleting” for cattle ranchers, but called out the funding the U.S. has given to Ukraine and not its farmers. (RELATED: American Food Spending As Portion Of Income Hits More Than 30-Year High)
“Well, you know, farmers are going out of business every day,” Boyd said. “What happening is America’s beef cattle producers are depleting their herds, so they’re not having more calves so they can multiply. We are producing 1 billion pounds less of American beef than we were last year this time. So, this is a crisis that is going to affect every American at the local grocery stores.”
“But here’s what’s problematic for me,” Boyd continued. “We have all of these other foreign countries – $100 billion to Ukraine and help Ukraine farmers, but we won’t help America’s farmers right here at home. We have Americans facing farm foreclosure and USDA will not stop farm foreclosures in this country for direct loans, guaranteed loans, and other agricultural lenders….We’re down to 40,000 Black farmers in this country and guess what? We are facing extinction. These policies aren’t helping cattlemen, like myself, stay on the farm. We have the highest input costs that you are seeing in decades. Diesel fuel prices going through. And this is why farmers can’t stay on the farm. We need good policies that can help us stay on the farm.”
Recent data released by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and Agricultural Statistics Board, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) late January showed that the inventory of all U.S. beef cattle from Jan. 1 was down 2% when compared to 2023’s count.
Additionally, the drop within this year’s beef herd inventory is a 4% decline from 2022 to 2023, making it the smallest beef herd the U.S. has had since 1951, according to American Farm Bureau Federation economist Bernt Nelson.
“What John is talking about is the symptom of the overreaching problem,” Sullivan weighed in. “The overreaching problem is globalism. It’s the global elites claiming that climate change is ruining the world and we that we must implement sustainability, which is just production and consumption control across the world. We see it going on all over. Because of this, we are becoming vertically integrated in our system. The beef cattle industry is the last fashion of freedom. So we have to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and stop these global elites from implementing all of these regulations.”
“These sustainable regulations that they claim that cattle are ruining the planet, we have to stop that and make sure people understand that sustainability is nothing but communism,” Sullivan continued. “As we know, two of the four major meat packers have invested heavily in bugs. One, Tyson Foods, announced two weeks ago that they’re going to build a $500 million plant for crickets. So this problem is real, but it’s a liberty and freedom issue. That’s where we have to focus, we have to stop this.”
Food processing company Tyson Foods released a press statement in October 2023 announcing their partnership with leading global insect ingredients company, Protix, to help grow a “more sustainable protein production.” The food company stated that the partnership between the two sought hopes of meeting “current market demand and scale production of insect ingredients,” as well as plans to build “an enclosed system” within the U.S.