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Where’s the beef? COVID-19 outbreak impacts Kentucky cattle farmers

The state agriculture commissioner said meat processing plants remain up and running, but shutdowns in other parts of the country are affecting the supply chain.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Since the pandemic really hit the United States hard, there have been a lot of things shoppers can’t find - toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and sanitary wipes. Beef and other meats are also on that list.

Sherwood Acres Farm is a smaller operation with about 50 head of mostly Belted Galloway cattle. Since beef has been hard to find and the farm does home deliveries. Owner Jon Bednarksi says his business has actually been busy.

“Over the last 30 days, probably 50% of our sales are new customers.” Bednarski said. “People obviously are wanting to stay isolated.”

However, for the big cattle farms, it’s a really tough time.

“Calves that they’re selling are bringing in about $100, $125 less,” Kenny Burdine, an agriculture economist at the University of Kentucky, said. “Heavier feeder cattle are probably bringing about $150 less than they would be.”

That will likely cut into Kentucky’s annual farm level beef sales which have been generating over $700 million each of the last three years, Burdine says. “There’s a really big possibility that when this is all said and done, that by the end of the year, that number is between 150 [million dollars] and $200 million less.”

Burdine says a few things are going on. Consuming beef has shifted much more away from restaurants to the home, and some of the big slaughterhouses in other states have shutdown or scaled back operations.

The supply of cattle is still the same, but fewer are moving through the processing plants.

With over a million head of cattle, Kentucky is the largest producer of beef east of the Mississippi River and ranks 8th among all states.

“What’s happening is that some of the producers are saying we’re just not going to sell these heavyweight cattle now because we’re not going to take a 20% or 30% loss,” Bednarski pointed out. “We’re just going to keep them.”

He’s worried some of his fellow farmers will not survive current conditions. “I think that there’s definitely some beef farmers that will, at some point here, say I’ve had enough."

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►Contact reporter John Charlton at jcharlton@whas11.com. Follow him on Twitter (@JCharltonNews) and Facebook.

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