http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wheres-the-beef/

A tale of 7+ years of cattle theft and some drought, and its effect on beef prices (along with some stories on how to steal cattle).

... A steer that sold for an average of $1.87 per pound in mid-January of 2014 was selling for $2.83 per pound a year later. That’s a 12-month increase of over 50 percent, the single biggest annual rise since 2000.

Beef prices have followed suit, if not quite as much as cattle prices. Over the seven years between January 2007 and January 2014, the price of wholesale beef rose 28 percent. It rose nearly the same percentage in just the 14 months after that.

In certain sectors of the market, the price increase has been even more dramatic. Brisket, the essential cut of Texas barbecue, has more or less supernovaed. In January 2007, a wholesale brisket cost $1.37 per pound. By January 2014, the price for the same cut had risen to $2.26 per pound, a seven-year increase of 65 percent. By January 2015, it had leapt to $3.52 per pound, a single year increase of 56 percent. ...

Yes, it's a 538 read ... but it has some pictures - like this one!

_________________
Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Awesome thread title.

I'm only eating grass fed steaks from our organic farmer friends and I don't give a shit how much it costs. Most delicious steak I've ever eaten.

I'm extremely anti-grass fed.

Give me corn-fed 'til I have a grabber and die.

_________________
My Maserati does 186.

partially caused by the idiotic ethanol mandate.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest