re: Beef prices and farmers...

Lot of possibly misinformed stuff here. The beef industry is far more segmented than other animal protein sectors for several reasons including land requirements and age at slaughter. We also have much more variance in animal genetics than do swine and poultry which is why you rarely get a porkchop or chicken breast that tastes much different from the one you got before.

By all means buy from a local guy that has a date set up with the local locker but don't believe that just because you are buying local you are getting a better product. So much of the quality of the end product (after taking into account genetics) has to do with the feeding program they were finished on and in that regard the guy doing it in his backyard cant compete with a feedyard. He doesn't have the ingredients or experience. If you're buying anything other than burger you're not getting some old thin cow. You're getting a steer or heifer that is almost always less than 24 months old.

Another potential downside to buying entire sides or quarters is what to do with everything other than the roasts, steaks, and grind. Thats why packers have a role, its easy enough to sell the main cuts everyone wants. It's harder to find consistent markets for everything else.

Getting away from the quality side, large scale animal agriculture is far more efficient than a guy finishing 10 head on his own. Thats why they exist. Some posts have mentioned ending live weights of 800-1000 lbs. On a large scale we havent been that light in a long time. Steers are getting finished at 1350+ lbs regularly today. The bottleneck on the packing side is a bad deal that will hopefully get better but its there because it takes a large business to be able to efficiently buy, kill, process, and then sell that animal. And in bad times it takes a large business to be able to weather the losses.