Meat prices exhibit strong seasonal patterns reflecting seasonal supplies. On the demand side, holidays and seasonal consumer preferences contribute to meat price patterns. Grilling season is a big demand pattern for beef, boosting ground beef and steaks during the summer. Seasonally tighter pork supplies during the summer boost pork prices. Now that Labor Day is past, marking the traditional end of summer as schools are back in session for most, will wholesale meat prices stick to their normal seasonality?
Beef
The Choice boxed beef cutout, a measure of the wholesale value of primal cuts in a carcass, tends to decline after mid-year. One factor is that beef production tends to increase from earlier lows. On the demand side, consumers move to more Fall and Winter fare and less grilling.
It looks like sharply declining beef production is going to disrupt the usual seasonal price pattern. Weekly beef production has been down more than 10 percent in some recent weeks compared to the same week a year ago. On the steak side of the market, wholesale ribeye prices have surged more than $3 per pound to $14.72 per pound last week. This is an earlier than usual price increase for this cut that normally increases heading into the holidays. Full tenderloins have increased like the ribeye, going from $15 per pound $18.65 per pound over the last few weeks. Strip loins have stuck to their normal pattern, declining a little more than $3 per pound since mid-year. Boneless, 90 percent lean beef continues to increase as fewer beef cows are culled. Chucks are climbing faster and higher than they usually do headed into Fall, hitting $6.50 per pound last week.
Pork
Wholesale pork prices usually have a strong seasonal component with the highest prices of the year during the Summer due to less production at that time. But, pork production has lagged below a year ago since before the Fourth of July and while it should increase seasonally it will likely remain below last year. It looks like more pigs per litter are not making up for fewer sows.
All of the wholesale pork primals are higher priced than last year, reflecting less production. Pork loins and butts are following the normal pattern, declining in value since mid-year. Ribs, bellies, and hams have moved higher. These three cuts can often be used as a great illustration of price volatility, and this year is no exception. As with beef, it looks like tighter supplies are going to outweigh seasonal patterns this Fall.
Overall
This SAT article focused on beef and pork. We’ll look at chicken and turkey in coming weeks, especially with Thanksgiving approaching. Overall, less production combined with good meat demand is certainly pressuring prices higher. Some volatility is added to the wholesale market as spot buying occurs to fill immediate needs.
As mentioned in previous Southern Ag Today (SAT) articles (Martinez and Ferguson 2022, Martinez 2023), monitoring Non-Real Estate Farm Debt provides insight into debt health. At the time of this article, harvesting is on many people’s minds, producers are baling hay, tariffs are a constant conversation, and livestock prices are at all-time highs. Last month’s reports offer the most recent snapshot of 2025 debt health. As a refresher, every commercial bank in the U.S. submits its quarterly Reports of Condition and Income, which are known as call reports. Within these call reports are totals of agricultural loans and the status (on time or late) of the loans. Figure 1 displays the total loan volume (yellow line) and loan volume for three late categories (30-89 days late, 90+ days late, non-accrual) for the last 17 quarters (4.25 years). The totals are for all the Southern Ag Today States.
In the first quarter of 2025, non-accrual (blue line) loans increased 80% from 2024 Q4. This makes the total amount the highest since 2021 Q4. Loans that are 90+ days late (grey line) remained relatively the same as 2024 Q4. The most concerning statistics are the loans that are 30-89 days late (orange line), which increased to $108.9 million in the SAT states. While this loan type seasonally increases in Q1, the amount increased 196% compared to 2024 Q4, and 146% compared to 2024 Q1. All states increased in these bad loan types, except for Louisiana (decreased by 20%). Due to the varying size of states, measuring the percentage of 30-89 days late loans compared to total loan volume is a good way to compare the SAT states and the impacts of these bad loan types. In 2024 Q1, the quarterly average of 30-89 days late loans to total loan volume was 0.3% (which is stable), with the highest being Oklahoma and Tennessee at 0.5%. In contrast, the 2025 Q1 quarterly average increased to 0.7% (which is still stable), with Alabama (3.1%) and Arkansas (1.4%) being the only two states above the average. For perspective, in 2024 Q1, Arkansas and Alabama were 0.3% and 0.1%, respectively, thus their 2025 Q1 measures lead to them not only increasing in bad loan types, but they are also the only states to have year-over-year increases above 1%. When comparing the percentage of total loan debt (non-accrual, 30-89 days late, and 90+ days late) compared to total loan volume, the quarterly average was 1%. Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina were the only three states below 1%. Alabama (6%) and Arkansas (2%) were the only two states above the quarterly average. Total loans (yellow line) are down from the previous quarter, which is expected due to seasonal trends. Total loan volume was up 4% compared to 2024 Q1.
From a sky-high view, the 2025 Q1 reports provide an indication of overall debt health following a tough profitability year for many row crop operations, and a strong revenue year for livestock producers in the SAT states. The Q1 reports indicate that some states are in stable conditions, but there are some states that have signals of concern. The concern leans towards the row crop side. Price prospects for many row crop operations for the rest of the year, and moving into next, have limited upside potential due to abundant domestic and global supplies. Thus, government payments will play a role in these bank reports moving forward. Last year’s government payments will likely assist in lowering some bad debt in the 2025 Q2 reports and offset some Q1 bad debt. I would expect government payments from ARC and PLC to occur again for this crop year (will not be received until October 2026), but having two consecutive years of being in survival mode strains the balance sheets and cash flow for producers and many will need to begin working with agricultural lenders to secure credit for 2026 earlier than a typical year. In the coming months, it is crucial that producers are mindful of their working capital and continue the positive production and risk management strategies they have implemented thus far.
Specialty crops are historically, and currently, labor-intensive enterprises. Labor costs typically range from 30-40% or more of total annual operating costs. Additional labor in packing, grading, distribution, and other supply chain activities makes this sector especially vulnerable to supply limitations and cost increases. The H-2A program, a program farmers rely on to meet their labor demand increased almost three-fold in the past decade. Approximately 75% of these workers were employed in the US specialty crop sector in 2024 (Figure 1). This growth in employment has happened despite significant increases in the adverse effect wage rate (AEWR) in the last years.
An expected response to the higher labor costs facing the US specialty crop farmers includes investments in technological alternatives. Automation, however, is often difficult to quickly implement as a substitute factor of production and includes high learning costs. Additionally, size and scale economies tend to dictate where adoption may or may not be feasible in the field or packing line.
To provide deeper insights into potential solutions for smaller SE US specialty crop growers, we gathered responses from produce industry leaders nationwide, who weighed in on labor saving technology substitution strategies. They shared the following valuable observations in response to the prompt: If there’s a labor-technology shift underway, could this prove too difficult for small farm agriculture?
“Most labor technology is larger scale, and even though it has come a long way, harvest for fresh market and what is needed for quality in a timely way is a long ways away.” Chris Falak (Gerber Grower direct farm sourcing)
“The industry is driven to use technology to replace labor, and the wage rate is ever increasing as well as other input costs. So far, innovations include optical packing lines, robotic and drone type sprayers and field disease detection. It will be difficult for small farms to absorb the increase in cost as the initial technology is cost prohibitive given a small number of acres.” Greg Cardamone, L& M Produce
“There could be barriers to entry for high-tech production ag equipment but there are also amazing opportunities to include better business management software, AI, and other technologies to help with management costs, sales, procurement, and supply chain. Those advantages could be easier for small farms to adapt verses larger incumbents that already have huge sunk costs in old ways of doing things. Small farm agriculture can also be better at hitting niche, low volume but high margin markets that are too finicky for large scale operations.” Cory Reinle, Nestle Produce Procurement Leader, formerly with Pero Farms and Winn-Dixie
“Definitively costly yet more sharing equipment/solutions and more IT companies adapting to smaller farmers by leasing vs. selling; pricing adjustments. The only concern here is that unless they start getting paid higher prices, they do not seem sustainable for the costs incurred. The owners are also concerned that training workers on new technology is time consuming for such short times of usage. This is a question mark for the future for small farmers.” Martha Montoya, CEO Ag Tools
“It will definitely present challenges, particularly in terms of capital investment and technical capacity. However, small farms still hold strategic advantages. They can differentiate themselves through direct-to-consumer marketing, local branding, and agility in responding to niche market demands. Moreover, diversification away from traditional growing regions—whether due to climate, labor, or logistics—can enhance supply chain resilience. Proximity to end consumers also reduces food miles and improves freshness, offering small farms a competitive edge even if they adopt technology at a slower pace.” Molly Tabron, Robinson Fresh
We identified two key takeaways emerging from the viewpoints of these industry experts that may provide smaller SE US produce growers with useful information:
As fast as technology has developed to support farm and post-harvest activities, pivoting away from the status quo will be slow. In some ways, smaller farms have advantages where they utilize less total labor and produce for niche markets that pay a high-quality premium. They may have less incentive to pivot toward more automated systems.
Automation related to management tools that can be used across supply chains may be under-appreciated as part of this revolution. Tools that can better facilitate the handling of high value perishable crops may have a larger impact on managing costs and adoption may not be as scale dependent.
In sum, the dynamics of labor cost and utilization will remain a central issue for the specialty crops industries for easily the next decade. Farms, industry partners, policy makers, and the ag technology trade need to work together to support labor and technology development for this industry that is characterized by highly segmented markets and variable production systems.
Figure 1.
Notes:
The author wishes to express thanks to the industry leaders that have contributed to the perspectives shared in this article. This was part of a special session organized by the Specialty Crops Section of the American Agricultural and Applied Economics Association annual meeting which took place in Denver, Colorado, on 28 July 2025. Session presenters, Maria Bampasidou, Elizabeth Canales, Karina Gallardo, Kuan-Ming Huang, Kim Morgan, Suzanne Thornsbury, and Tim Woods, are members of the S1088 Specialty Crops and Food Systems: Exploring markets, supply chains and policy dimensions. Figure 1 shared here by Bampasidou and Canales from their presentation titled “Labor Considerations: Observations from Southern States”.
A common question we’ve been fielding since passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill: “with all this money coming from the Federal government, why do farmers keep complaining?” It’s generally followed by: “you just can’t make some people happy.”
There’s no question the Federal government has provided a robust level of assistance. For example, the American Relief Act in December 2024 provided $30.78 billion in relief—$10 billion for economic assistance and $20.78 billion for natural disaster assistance. The recently-passed One Big Beautiful Billprovided approximately $62 billion (10-year total) in improvements to the farm safety net.[1] While these sound like big numbers—because they are—it’s important to put them in context.
First, for the $10 billion in economic relief from the American Relief Act—implemented by USDA as the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP)—Congress required USDA to calculate losses from the 2024 crop year and then limited the amount of assistance to 26% of the loss. In other words, for losses incurred by producers last year, they were required to shoulder 74% of that loss on their own.
Second, for the $20.78 billion in relief for natural disasters in the American Relief Act—implemented by USDA as the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP)—Congress limited USDA to covering no more than 90% of losses incurred in 2023 and 2024. While that certainly sounds like a lot, once the total losses were estimated by USDA, they were only able to cover 35% of the losses based on the funding provided by Congress. So, SDRP effectively covers, at most, just under 32% of the loss (or 35% x 90%).
Importantly, ARC and PLC also will help cover losses from the 2024 crop year once paid in October 2025, but that assistance is at the old levels last adjusted more than a decade ago in the 2014 Farm Bill. In other words, the relief provided by the American Relief Act was all retroactive for losses already incurred and only covered a portion of the losses.
What about the 2025 crop year? While the One Big Beautiful Bill made several improvements to the farm safety net—from increasing reference prices from 10-20% to adding up to an additional 30 million base acres nationwide—most of the improvements kick in with the 2025 crop year. Congress stipulated (using the same schedule that has been in place since the 2008 Farm Bill) that payments cannot be made until October 1 of the year following the end of the marketing year for a crop. Translation: the new assistance won’t go out the door until October 1, 2026. Yes, you read that right. Further, the magnitude of the projected losses to the 2025 crop are such that the assistance will, yet again, only cover a small portion of the loss. Consider the following example:
The estimated national average cost of production for soybeans in 2025 is $639.15/ac.[2] Using USDA’s August 2025 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE), the expected return for soybeans is $535.80/ac (or a planted-acre yield of 53.05 bu/ac x $10.10/bu), for an expected loss of $103.35/ac (or $1.95/bu).[3] The question is how much of that loss will be covered by the new-and-improved ARC and PLC. At present, PLC is projected to pay $0.61/bu and ARC—assuming average yields—would pay $0.85/bu.[4] Assuming the farm is fully based—where both ARC-CO and PLC use a payment factor of 85%—you effectively receive $0.7225/bu (or 85% of $0.85/bu). In other words, while the One Big Beautiful Bill provided significant improvements, in the case of soybeans (and virtually every other row crop to varying degrees), it will cover just 37% (or $0.7225/$1.95) of the loss…when it arrives next year. Losses upon losses. Starting to see why folks are concerned?
To pull all of this together: yes, significant assistance has been provided to the countryside, but on average, it only covers a fraction of the past/projected losses. That is why you are hearing a collective groaning in the countryside. What to do about it? Absent new trade deals that spur additional demand, a renewed focus on in-kind food aid, or commodity-specific demand levers (think ethanol for corn)—and perhaps in addition to all of those things—we suspect Congress will begin contemplating yet another round of disaster aid this fall and/or the Trump Administration will begin discussing intervening with trade aid. To those asking us the questions at the top of this article and for the record: we’ve never met a farmer who preferred getting their income from the government…and they can’t wait to break this cycle of praying to simply break even.
The Mississippi River level measured by the U.S. Geological Survey at Memphis, TN, may drop to severe lows for the fourth year in a row (USGS, 2025). The Mississippi River has fallen below the agreed-upon zero reference point of the USGS stream gage during harvest (i.e., August 1 through November 30) eight of the last ten years, underscoring the impacts drought can have on river levels. We discussed what is meant by a river level below the zero reference point in a previous article (Biram, Mitchell, and Stiles, 2024; National Weather Service, 2024). Further, the level has now fallen to the “low” stage, defined by the National Weather Service as -5 feet, five times (2015, 2017, 2022, 2023, and 2024). These historically low river levels carry serious implications for cash basis, or the local cash price offered by a grain elevator less the futures price traded on a global market (Biram and Mitchell, 2025).
Figure 1 plots the Mississippi River level measured at Memphis, Tennessee, for the period August 11, 2022, through August 20, 2025. This figure also provides the weekly average freight, as well as the expected barge freight rate measured by the non-drought three-year average freight rate (i.e., 2019-2021). Barge freight rates are established by the U.S. Inland Waterway System using a percent of tariff system and have been discussed in a prior article (Biram, Mitchell, and Stiles, 2024). Since the 2022 drought event, we have observed that when the gage height falls, barge freight rates increase, and vice versa. However, it appears that barge operators have adjusted as the weekly average freight rate has declined since the drought event of 2022.
Figure 1. The relationship between the Mississippi River level and barge freight rates for moving cargo from Cairo, IL or Memphis, TN (August 2022 – August 2025)
Nonetheless, midsouth soybean basis is not only weaker than the non-drought five-year-average (i.e., 2017-2021) but is also weaker than the average basis observed over the last three drought years (i.e., 2022, 2023, and 2024). Basis can change abruptly due to economic or environmental events, such as low river levels. Changes in basis reflect changes to local market conditions. Local cash bids offered by elevators on the Mississippi River tend to be influenced by river level in periods of drought as described by previous SAT articles (Biram, et al., 2022; Biram, 2023; Gardner, Biram, and Mitchell, 2023; Biram, Mitchell, and Stiles, 2024). This is because it is more expensive to ship the same amount of grain in more loads to reduce barge draft.
Figure 2 shows the soybean basis response to low river levels in Helena, Arkansas in 2022-2024 with current basis for 2025 well below average as of August 20, 2025. The green line in Figure 2 provides the most recent basis for new crop soybeans and is well below both the averages for non-drought and drought years. The dashed vertical line denotes the basis most recently reported (-15) on August 20, 2025, and is 41 cents below the average non-drought-event basis of 26 cents and 25 cents below the average drought-event basis of 10 cents.
Figure 2. Daily Soybean Basis at Helena, AR in Harvest Window
The economic impacts of marketing in this window are clear. Mitchell and Biram (2025) determined that in 2022, alone, Arkansas farmers faced nearly $300 million in losses due to widening basis driven by low river levels, with a similar impact in Mississippi. A potential option farmers might have is to store grain in the bin and market it during the post-harvest window as described in previous Southern Ag Today articles (Gardner, 2023; Gardner and Maples, 2023; Gardner, 2024; Smith, 2024). Historically, futures and basis tend to recover in the months when there is little domestic production to buy, and stocks are drawn down. However, we recognize that not all farmers have the infrastructure in place (i.e., 48% of expected total crop production in 2024 was held in storage (USDA-NASS, 2025a and 2025b)) to store grain and market in the post-harvest window, which has implications for 2025 returns and 2026 loan renewal.
National Weather Service. “How can a river stage be negative?” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service. Accessed September 16, 2024. Permalink
