Adam Bode, CEO of Aberdeen’s DemKota beef plant, told Sioux Falls Rotarians last week that raising or feeding bovines is “a great business and an even better lifestyle.” Yet the labior market seems to disagree with his boosterism:
In 2024, Aberdeen’s DemKota beef processing plant bought cattle from 400 producers.
This year, they bought from 300.
“That wasn’t because we chose to,” CEO Adam Bode told the Sioux Falls Downtown Rotary Club on Monday.
It’s because the producers aren’t there any longer. Raising or feeding cattle is “a great business and an even better lifestyle,” said Bode, but it’s one fewer and fewer people — particularly young people — can afford to get into. He said the average age of a South Dakota cattle producer is 63 [John Hult, “Beef Boosters: Young People Needed to Keep Cattle Industry Vibrant,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.12.01].
Bode doesn’t elaborate in Hult’s article on what makes life in livestock so great—maybe the independence? Working outside? Smelling like shit “money” all the time? The adoring looks of great awkward arks as you stuff forkfuls of hay under each steaming nose? But he and his fellow speakers at last week’s forum do make clear why the industry isn’t attracting new blood—high costs and volatility:
“To the bankers in the room: Loan that money to that young producer,” Bode said. “It is a high capital business to get started. That’s the biggest hurdle to get new players in it, and we desperately need them.”
Dave Geraets, who has 2,500 head of cattle and grows row crops outside of Colton, said the cattle side of the business is wildly volatile. Diversified operations can help producers weather price fluctuations — particularly when corn prices are high, Geraets said — but adding cropland only makes it harder to start from scratch.
“No matter if it’s land or cattle, all of it is expensive,” said Geraets, who hopes to see his kids stay involved in the business.
This year, the wild price swings for cattle have been historic. A low inventory pushed prices to an all-time high in August.
The prices didn’t last. Citing a desire to lower beef prices for consumers, President Donald Trump announced his intention to push for the importation of more beef from Argentina this fall by increasing the number of tariff-free metric tons each year from 20,000 to 80,000.
“We retracted that market by 25% in two weeks,” said Ryan Eichler, founder and board president for the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Foundation. “Imagine the stock market retracting 25% in two weeks” [Hult, 2025.12.01].
Even Bode’s job has a high dollar barrier to entry:
“We have an internal joke in our industry: If you ever want to make a couple million bucks in beef processing, just start with a couple billion,” Bode said [Hult, 2025.12.01].
Ag-industrialists’ sense of humor is matched only by their capacity for happy-talk. Ag is a dying industry because young people looking to turn their ambition and a couple hundred thousand in start-up funds into a great business and better lifestyle have a lot of options that are cheaper, less volatile, and more likely to turn a profit without ongoing indentured servitude to the bank. Whatever may be appealing about going into ranching may be found elsewhere. Like being your own boss and working outside? Go into construction: people are always building houses, and the start-up costs are a third of what you need to get going in agriculture.
There’s a deeper problem that Bode and his fellow processors could address: industrialization of agriculture requires ranchers and farmers to operate at such massive scale to turn a profit that young people can’t afford to enter the marketplace. DemKota represents a step in the right direction, a smaller plant working with local producers, but the beef industry needs to find a way to make it profitable for more ranchers to produce beef for their neighbors rather than for the factories so young people can afford to get started and stay running… and the industry needs to figure that out before all of the current ranchers age out of the business.
Either that, or we’re going to have to grow all of our meat in vats.