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.
https://www.propublica.org/article/grazing-ranchers-public-lands-trump
Billionaires love them some public grazing.
Florida has made cultivating lab grown beef illegal. Its the future of beef. A perfect steak is at stake. Get rid of all those gaseous animals. Who knows what their raised on or fed to get fat and bloated. Cellular meat is the future. Ranchers could still wear their cowboy hats. Cowboy boots are fine too.
Raising cattle is a daily job and many people do not want that requirement or commitment. As one gets older, raising cattle becomes more difficult for the aging body. As one drives around SD, I see so many farmsteads that one can see raised cattle in years past. Most rural landowners have chosen to raise grain crops on their land because it does not require the year around daily commitment of cattle.
Good luck getting land. Pretty tough to get into commodity ag without inheriting or coming in with money made from being in some other industry. How often does land exchange hands? Every 80+ years or so? Almost never?
Mark, the vast majority of them are fed corn, maybe alfalfa for protein,
maybe soybean meal for protein.
Commercial feedlots have mixer wagons; corn silage, ground corn, and
some kind of protein supplement are mixed together and fed in
a feed bunk. You can probably find a video online of the whole
process.
Yeah, Scott. 12 years ago, at 69, I was still carrying calves through the mud. Now
I wouldn’t chance walking in the cow yard.
but we onlysend steers to dc
an important issue for our tiny red red deluded state, but this seems to reflect the grift at the highest level as trump satiates his narcissism and greed w/ the bloody cuts of the finest products ranchers produce (in their mutual mass delusion}. and John Thune is running this wagon to hell.
Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, says the real motive behind the massive US military buildup in the Caribbean is oil: his country has the largest proven reserves in the world. guardian 12/6/25
now that SCOTUS corruptly legitimized TX gerrymandering, we are in trouble. and Thune thinks we are safer now in the world under trump. power has corrupted every democratic protection in Republican SD. Beef. Oil. It’s all money to Thune, Rounds, 6-3 SCOTUS and the GOP. We have an idiot party and president in control of nukes, climate, sex and physical and emotional violence. I told you Kristi’s camo cap was a signal to militia radicals.
Oil, Leslie? I was certain it was their cattle we were after to save the felon’s ass on his economy.
Iowa Mike: Hope you are well.
Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, who knew raising cattle was so complicated? Felon just wants rancher votes, not their problems he can’t address in a sound bite and then move on to another con.
“… there are only nine states where cattle outnumber people. We make up only 18 of the 100 U.S. Senators. The government shutdown has clearly illustrated the need for support from 60 members to pass any meaningful reforms in the U.S. Senate. That means if we want to accomplish any long-term solutions for the cattle market, we need to broaden our base [Democrats] and shift our message to focus on the benefits that policies ” Mike Rounds proposes receive bi-partisan support. ( https://www.rounds.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rounds-discusses-argentinian-beef-imports-with-president-trump-secretary-rollins )
Trump feels the heat from his ranchers and has beef policy meetings include Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro with plans to begin importing more beef from Argentina to lower prices. Throwing plates at the wall, Pam Bondi and and the Federal Trade Commission task force will determine whether anticompetitive behavior exists among the largest meatpackers in the US (two are Brazilian owned). The best people, right, so its music to Rounds ears. After trump tweeted “buy some beef from Argentina,” predicting the move “will bring our beef prices down,” adding “it would help Argentina, which we consider a very good country, a very good ally.”
The aircraft carrier Ford’s 11/12 Caribbean arrival brings the total number of troops in the region to around 12,000 on nearly a dozen Navy ships in what Hegseth has dubbed “Operation Southern Spear.” Launched 2022, Ford carries “unmanned aircraft, joint strike fighters, and deployed lasers.”[66] Trump: land strikes would not necessarily be limited to Venezuela. He said any country where illicit drugs are produced or trafficked “is subject to attack,” and singled out neighboring Colombia.
Stir it up, eh? War for better hamburger prices, Trump’s daily steak, or the globe’s 5th highest provable oil reserves?
YOU elected him South Dakota :)