The price of beef is at an all-time high, but a significant legislative move by the incoming Trump administration might drive it higher.
Mass deportations could force some ranchers and feedlots out of business in a sector already short on manpower.
Raising cattle is a difficult task. Almost every day, Kansas ranchers and feedlot managers must deal with drought, illness, or blizzard. The industry’s largest issue, however, is a chronic labor shortage. This is especially true for southwest Kansas.
“If the immigrants weren’t there to help out, there wouldn’t be an operation functional in any of those places,” said Micheal Feltman, an immigration attorney in Cimarron, Kansas, just west of Dodge City.
Feltman helps nearby feedlots and giant dairy farms find staff. He said that people from at least 40 countries are bringing life into southwest Kansas’ beef industry and regional economy.
Nearly half of those who process meat in the United States were born elsewhere, and immigrants do the majority of the work feeding and maintaining animals.
The majority of these workers are here legally, but a sizable proportion are not, and documented immigrants sometimes support close family members living with them illegally.
That’s why many in the meat industry are concerned about President-elect Donald Trump’s promises of a broad crackdown on immigration, border security, and the deportation of 11 million people.
Feltman said that mass deportations will set off a chain reaction of troubles in the meat business, which is already chronically understaffed.
Processing plants would halt, resulting in meat shortages, which experts fear will drive consumer prices to record highs. Farmers would end up with more cattle than they could sell or care for, and the value of their animals would fall.
“If every immigrant … over the last 20 years disappeared immediately, it would be a ghost town,” according to Feltman. “I don’t know how the businesses would survive.”
The beef industry runs on imported labor
For one recent Haitian immigrant, who claimed she was terrified to reveal her name because she had fled starvation and severe violence back home, the stakes appear to be life or death.
The mom and her four-year-old daughter traveled to Garden City three months ago. They are here on temporary humanitarian parole. That means she has two years to apply for asylum.
She is still waiting for a work visa, but she says she is eager to undertake any kind of labor, including dangerous, uncomfortable, and smelly positions at the Tyson packing facility on the outskirts of town.
Through an interpreter, she stated that she is following the letter of the law in order to remain in the United States, and that she has an appointment for a screening that will pave the way for her work visa and financial independence.
“It will bring me a lot of joy,” she explained. “Because I have a kid to take care of, I have myself, and if I could invest in the country, it would bring me a lot of joy.”
Given Trump’s comments during and after the election, she now believes she will be sent back to the deadly instability of Haiti rather than joining a workforce that desperately needs her.
“It is not safe.” “The gangs are killing people,” she stated.
Despite significant wage increases for meat processing workers in recent years, the industry is unable to hire enough people. Employers in southwest Kansas say there aren’t enough native-born workers willing to show up on time and do the dirty work required in the meat industry.
Because the complicated immigration system does not allow enough legal immigrants to make up the difference, some businesses resort to hiring undocumented workers to make ends meet.
Jada Thompson, an economist at the University of Arkansas, said mass deportations would exacerbate the problem, sending shockwaves throughout the meat supply chain. For one thing, deporting meatpacking workers would slow down the plants, causing shortages.
“I think we’re going to see higher prices (for) the retail (customer),” Thompson said.
But farmers would not benefit from rising retail prices, she said, because there would be too many animals in the system for meat processors to use, a glut that would grow daily as more pigs and cows matured.
“I think you’ll end up eventually seeing lower prices (for) farmers,” says Thompson, “because it will eventually be oversupply because, effectively, they just can’t harvest that many animals.”
Thompson stated that the same thing happened a few years ago, but the reason for the labor shortage was not an immigration crackdown, but rather the COVID pandemic.
“And what happened in that supply chain?” Thompson asked. “It backed it up.” Prices have gone up. All of a sudden, you had people with pigs and cows who couldn’t get to market because there was no place to slaughter them.”
Those animals still needed to be fed and given space to live, but no one wanted to buy them for meat, so farmers were spending extra money every day to keep more pigs and cows alive. Some farmers eventually had to cut their losses by shooting and burying their livestock. Everyone loses.
According to Glynn Tonsor, an economist at Kansas State University, such losses would be felt throughout southwest Kansas towns that rely on large feedlots, dairies, and packing houses.
“They very often are one of the largest employers and local tax generators, so there’s relevant implications for funding of schools, funding of libraries, funding of anything you want to talk about that’s publicly funded in local areas,” Tonsor went on.
It’s unclear how Trump’s deportations will work, if they happen at all, but Kansas Livestock Association CEO Matt Teagarden hopes they move slowly and protect the immigrant-dependent meat industry.
Teagarden believes border security should be strengthened, but he would like to see the system for granting work visas streamlined rather than hampered. It is either import people or import food.
“One of the alternatives is our food production goes overseas or moves outside the country,” Teagarden told reporters. “If we don’t have an adequate workforce, can’t produce the food that we all want each day, each week, each month, that food production will go elsewhere.”