08/16/2026
Tyson closed its Joslin beef plant Thursday.
If you aren't in the cattle business, there’s a good chance you never heard about it.
And if you did, it probably sounded like another plant closure in another town.
But standing on this gravel road, looking at this picture, I see something much bigger.
I see one less buyer competing for American cattle. One more piece of our market concentrated into fewer hands. One more squeeze on the people standing at the very beginning of the food chain.
And I see two little girls who absolutely love cows, and I wonder what kind of cattle industry we are handing them.
Because this picture is almost exactly what people imagine when they think of cattle country.
Cows grazing under a ridiculous Iowa sunset. Little girls following Dad down the road. One riding on his shoulders. Boots, pasture and a life that looks pretty damn good from the outside.
Our own little version of Yellowstone.
What the picture can't show you is the kitchen-table math behind it.
It can't show you what happens when another cattle buyer disappears. When competition shrinks. When cattle have to travel farther. When a handful of companies gain more control over the market while the people actually raising the cattle lose more of theirs.
Joslin isn't just a plant closing.
That loss ripples through feedlots, truckers, sale barns, feeder cattle, cow-calf producers and rural communities.
Eventually, it reaches your supper table too.
Because fewer companies controlling more of the path between pasture and plate should concern every person who eats beef.
This is why knowing where your food comes from matters.
Know your farmer.
Know your rancher.
Buy local when you can.
Support your local locker.
And when you buy beef elsewhere, ask harder questions.
Where was that animal born?
Where was it raised?
Where was it harvested?
American consumers deserve meaningful Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling. They deserve to know whether the beef they're buying was actually born and raised by an American cattle producer.
Talk to your representatives.
Demand MCOOL. Demand competitive cattle markets. Demand more from the associations that are supposed to represent cattle producers.
Because when I look at this picture, that is the part that gets me.
Our girls don't love some romantic idea of ranch life.
They love the actual cows.
The checking calves, opening gates, muddy boots, mending fences, knowing which cow belongs to which baby, “Dad, can we keep this one?” version.
And if that love stays with them, we aren't simply raising the next generation of cattle(wo)men.
We're raising cattle warriors.
Because if they decide this honest, hard, God-given work is what they want to spend their lives doing, they are going to have to fight harder than I ever imagined just for the privilege of doing it.
Fight for land.
Fight for markets.
Fight for competition.
Fight for transparency.
Fight for enough margin to survive.
Fight to keep American cattle in the hands of American cattle families.
I want them to inherit evenings like this.
Cows on grass. Dad in the pasture. A sunset that stops you in your tracks. A life built around animals they have loved since they were old enough to say the word cow.
I hate knowing they may also inherit the fight to keep it.
So when you hear that another beef plant closed and think it has nothing to do with you, look a little closer.
Because while everyone is admiring the sunset, the future of the American cattleman is being decided quietly in the background.
And once enough cattlemen are gone, enough competition is gone, and enough control has been handed over, getting it back is going to be one hell of a fight.
