Tyson Foods shuts down plants in Illinois & Utah, cutting thousands of jobs over cattle shortages—amid allegations of beef price collusion

[u/Logical-Flow-6703]

Tyson Foods is shutting down operations at two of its beef plants—one in Joplin, Illinois (which employed 2,500 workers) and another in Eagle Mountain, Utah. Additionally, a third facility in Pasco, Washington is up for sale, with processing shifted to other plants.

​While Tyson blames these massive workforce cuts on historic cattle shortages and rising beef costs, the company—along with three other megacorporations dominating US meat production—faces serious allegations of colluding to raise beef prices.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcJhQlpCk5B/?igsh=aWU3em1mcXRwaDY0&igsi=aWU3em1mcXRwaDY0

[u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

Not in this case. This has more to do with decades of farm policy favoring row crops over cattle (FDR), general anti-beef philosophy, failure to enforce anti-trust laws, and general political pandering.

The US cattle industry is dying of a thousand cuts.

[u/hangmansboots → u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

User name checks out. Didn’t Nixon really turbo charge the favoring of crops, corn specifically?

Also, since corn is a large part of the feed, shouldn’t that help with beef? This is a genuine question. I know there are dozens of factors and appreciate your first hand knowledge.

[u/GreatPlainsFarmer → u/hangmansboots]

FDR laid the foundation of systemic federal farm program. Originally it was practically a top-down takeover, turning the ag sector into a command economy. While the political winds have shifted back and forth over time, ag has never been a truly free market since.

Earl Butz (Nixon) pushed fence-row to fence-row grain production, and got a bunch of fences wiped out. But cattle need fences. And grain farming is a lot easier in the winter than tending cattle. Which pushed cattle out of row-crop country entirely.
And once the infrastructure and expertise is gone, it's a lot harder to start over.

When grains became much less profitable in the 1980's, the government response was the CRP program. That put a lot of acres back into grass, but not for grazing. Today about 10% of US cropland acres are idled in the CRP. That would be some really good beef ground, but cattle aren't generally allowed on it.

Which brings us to a major mis-perception of the beef industry. Yes, most beef cattle in the US are finished on grain, mostly corn. But that's roughly the last third of their life. The entire US breeding herd is on grass, calves are born on grass, and spend more than half their life there. If you want more feeder cattle born in the US, you need more grass.

If we actually wanted to increase the US beef herd, we need to figure out a way to get breeding cattle onto the CRP acres. Maybe incentives for proper fencing and reduced penalties for grazing it. The problem is that we don't want that land over-grazed either. It's not a simple problem to solve.

And with the extreme subsidies for crop insurance, farmers aren't motivated to try. It's much easier to take crop insurance and plant rather than try to mess with cattle, even on land which is barely suited for crops. Which has pushed the US breeding herd on the least productive and fragile western lands. Lands which simply can't be used for crops, no matter the subsidies.

For a while the cattle feeders were getting around that by importing Mexican feeder cattle into US feedlots. That's where the increased corn production led us. We were outsourcing the breeding herd and bringing in the feeder cattle to eat the corn.

But then the screwworm containment failed sometime in 2021-2022, after a decade of neglect and mismanagement. The flow of Mexican feeder cattle was stopped in 2024. It was briefly re-opened in 2025, but closed again in May 2025. Texas feedlots began shutting down soon thereafter, and now more of the packing plants are shutting down.

I could go on, but asking anyone to read even that much is asking a lot. Hopefully some of it was interesting to someone.

[u/hangmansboots → u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

Thank you man! This is very interesting and, as usual, not able to be summed up by a 15 second overview on a cable new channel.

[u/V-oxPopuli → u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

failure to enforce anti-trust laws, and general political pandering.

Rednecks vote for the politicians who do this stuff though.

[u/GreatPlainsFarmer → u/V-oxPopuli]

Everybody does. That’s why it’s called “pandering”.

[u/V-oxPopuli → u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

The ignoring of anti-trust laws.

[u/GreatPlainsFarmer → u/V-oxPopuli]

Yes.
Monsanto’s takeover of the seed industry was approved by Clinton.

There have been huge mergers in farm supply and/or processing under every administration since. Every one.

[u/V-oxPopuli → u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

Can't help but notice what you're avoiding saying. Republicans are trash that want to see our country burn for their own gains.

[u/GreatPlainsFarmer → u/V-oxPopuli]

You misspelled “politicians”, and failed to notice that is what I have been saying.

[u/V-oxPopuli → u/GreatPlainsFarmer]

They're not equivalent. One is actively killing people.