(Radio Iowa) – A year ago in the midst of the pandemic, the price spread between packers and cattle producers rose to 1500 percent and John Tupper, vice president of the U-S Cattlemen’s Association, says the four big meat packers still are making significant profits. “Packers have enjoyed unbelievable profits,” Tupper said, “harvesting around 120,000 head per day while cattle producers go out of business and consumers pay double or even triple at the meat counter.”

Tupper, an auctioneer and cow-calf operator from South Dakota, testified during a U-S Senate Ag Committee hearing Wednesday afternoon. Farm state lawmakers are considering bills that would give independent livestock operators more information about prices, as many cattle sales are now private. “There is a crisis in rural America. We are losing our producers at an alarming rate,” Tupper says, “all the while watching big corporate feeders, packers make record profits with the threat of verticle integration hanging over our head.”

There were about three-point-six MILLION head of cattle and calves in Iowa on January 1st, down more than 200-thousand from the previous year. Tupper says a steer is worth about 16-hundred dollars today. “Packers could buy that steer and sell it for beef alone, not counting byproducts, for over $2800 a head today,” he says, “for a gross profit margin of over 80%.”

The North American Meat Institute, a trade group representing meat packers, says prices are following market trends as supply for meat struggles to keep pace with demand. Iowa now ranks eighth among the states in cattle production.