First thing I, you know, very seldom that I disagree with with, president Donald Trump. He said he's gonna lower the price of eggs. Price of eggs came down. He's gonna lower the price of gasoline. It came down. Says he's gonna lower the price of beef. I you can bet he's gonna lower the price of beef. I just have a disagreement on on how we do it. Okay. He he, announced that we're gonna quadruple the number of imports, beef imports from Argentina. Well, that's two problems with that. Number one, that's not America first. That's not, you know, building American jobs and and showing up the the ranching industry. Two, it adds to our agriculture trade deficit of fifty billion dollars. First time in my lifetime, we have an agriculture trade deficit. Thanks to Biden, his his crew didn't sign one, marketing agreement. None. Not not any new ones, but he also we lost our current customers. So America's always been the breadbasket of the world. We feed ourselves and a lot of other people, but not under Biden. We are buying fifty billion dollars more food than we're selling. So that means now that we are dependent on foreign countries to feed us. That we've gotta turn that around, and we're working real hard with the Department of Agriculture to make that happen. So it it's not America first, and it increases our agriculture trade deficit. But I didn't just complain. I had some suggestions how how we can rebuild the beef herd. I said, number one, we're still in drought. We don't have any place to when we run out of grass, we have to sell our cows. They go to slaughterhouse, turn them into hamburger. So another thing that Biden did was, cancel grazing leases on federal land. So now we have twenty four million acres of idle grazing lease. So I suggest we first thing we can do is open that up so we have a place to put our cows and and, maybe even keep back some, heifers to to, you know, build a cow herd. So they did that. They opened five million acres. I think they're fixing to open some more of that. So that's good. A good first step. Now we got a place to go to the cows, and we don't have to sell them. Number two, I suggested to give an incentive to, ranchers, to hold some heifers back and build a herd. And I suggested a heifer retention tax credit. It's not a bailout, not a subsidy. It's just simply take five hundred dollars per head and and, take it right off your income tax. Just give yourself a deduction. Some of these ranchers are finally making some money, and they or do they ever deserve it. They could use the tax break. If you'll give them five hundred dollars a heifer, they'll hold some back. I promise you. And and the herd will start rolling. That's that's the best thing we can do. And then, you know, I told him, look. We we gotta be transparent. We gotta be truthful with American consumer. You know, every product you buy, with the exception of two, has country of origin of labor. Avocados come in from Mexico, it says product of Mexico. If you buy grapes from Peru, it says product of Peru. Now this beef from Argentina doesn't follow that. When that beef comes up from Argentina, they can grind it up in the hamburger and package it and sell it as product of USA. Right. Can you believe that? That's horrible.

Right.

We gotta stop that. Do the same thing with pork. So people go buy Argentine beef thinking it's it's from the greater American ranch. It's not. And it's low quality. It's terrible. Actually, the only thing we're we're buying is is is, lean. And we'll mix it with with American tallow, American fat, because we've got lots of fat cattle, or trim off off our fat cattle. So it's two two genetically different types of meat, are gonna be mixed together and sold as product of USA. That that has to stop. And then we we need, a lot of these profits are not from the the rancher, but but from the packers. So I requested that Trump do an investigation on on the four big packers, especially the two foreign owned ones, for, you know, price fixing collusion, monopoly, and they act they're actually doing that too. There is an investigation in big packing companies to see if they're, you know, dealing us a good hand or not. And they they may or may not, but we will we'll get to the bottom of it and find out. That seems to be

a big part of the problem is is the imported beef. You know? And they're they're bringing that in at a discount, but still charging the premium prices for it. And it's hurting the ranchers, and it's hurting the consumers and the restaurants. The only people benefiting from it are the are the packers. Well,

I'll I'll I'll I'll make a prediction. This this beef that we're gonna bring in from Argentina, the margins will be made by by the processors. It won't be a saving to the consumer. It it just won't I just don't I don't think it's gonna drop the price for Hamburg. It certainly hadn't yet. So we'll see. And it's it's really in the big scheme of things, it's it's not a significant portion of of our hamburger supply. It's less than one tenth of one percent. So, you know, it's really hard enough to move the minute needle. The only thing it's gonna do is make make the beef processors a little more money.

You use the word racket to describe the control that the foreign owned meatpackers have over our food supply. And as the agricultural commissioner for the largest cattle producing state, do you believe that Texas has the antitrust teeth to go after the packers independently if the DOJ can't get it done?

Well, I don't I don't it doesn't really need to happen at the state level. It needs to happen at the federal level because, you know, there's there's a lot of feedlots in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado. I mean, we're not the only ones that feed cattle. So if you're gonna get it right, we need to go every to every plant where where they're doing this and and hold them accountable.

Yeah. Wayne, you had you had a great point about that earlier.

Thinking about this as as a Texas institution, at least barbecue establishments, even though this is anecdotal, I don't actually have numbers to to substantiate this. I know that a lot of a lot of us will receive our our brisket, from, say, Cisco or Benny Keith or Performance. And these these supplies come from one of the four packers, and they generally seem to come from out of state. Nebraska, Kansas, maybe even Iowa.

Colorado. Colorado.

Some from Oklahoma. How can initiatives here actually affect the prices that we're seeing that we're purchasing, that we're buying? And that may have a lot to do with just the Angus, variety or the Angus program that we're buying from. Do you have any input on that?

Well, we we do some things here here in Texas a little different to promote locally grown, you know, locally sourced. We have a marketing program called called the Go Texan program. Mhmm. And it it's a it's a branded program, and you can assure if that our logo, it's Texas with a circle around it, that that is a Texas product. If that's a Texas brisket or or Texas meat, we, you know, and we're encouraged a a lot of, farm to to consumer, selling. I matter of fact, I have changed my my cattle operation. I I used to just, raise cattle and and sell them at the local auction barn, but now I've I've raised f one Wagyu, and I've got my own little feedlot, and I've I've feed them out and sell them directly to consumer. I get a premium for it, and they get a they get a better buy than they could get, you know, buying that premium beef at at the grocery store. So we both win. So we're doing a lot of that to try to try to get around these these big packers. We've got a lot of, independent, packing plants that have have popped up across Texas. Those are increasing. So we're we're encouraging that. And, you know, it it all changed after after COVID. I I call them COVID mothers. They wanna know where their food comes from, and they wanna know what's in it. And so they're this, locally sourced, local supply is a thing that's, that, you know, we we can if if you wanna do a little extra work, it's it's not, you know, without a little extra effort, we can capitalize on that.

The problem that we have with that is, generally speaking, the smaller ranchers and the niche or cottage ranchers just don't they don't process enough cattle for our needs for us to be consistent across the board on that brand. I mean, there's only two briskets per cow.

Yeah.

So, you know, if you're only processing a hundred cows a week, then it doesn't really help us.

My point was I wasn't just specifically saying brisket, but, you know, a a family of four can can buy half a beef, and they'll get a they'll get a brisket with it, but they'll also get some roast and steaks and and fajita meat and everything else that they, you know, that they will that they'll need to feed their family.

Mhmm.

And it's locally sourced, and they know they know what's in it. No antibiotics, no hormones. It's grass raised and grain fed. So it's it's it's a superior beef. Gives us another outlet was the point I was trying to make.

And I guess that's that's Texas's version of mandatory country of origin labeling having the the Go Texan, program. Right? It's telling everybody where it comes from. But I'm I'm curious. Bill Bullard said that the mandatory country of origin labeling was was one of the first and most crucial steps to to try to change the tide here. During the brief window when when McCool was mandatory in twenty thirteen and twenty fifteen, American beef was actually, you know, earned a premium because consumers had the information to choose that. And I'm wondering if if you can succeed in making, the country of origin labeling mandatory again. We're worried that it might make the price go even higher. You know? Or do you believe that the market transparency would balance that out in the long run or, you know, like, could it backfire?

Well, I I don't think it'll make that much difference in price. And a matter of fact, consumers will probably pay a little extra to know exactly where where their meat's coming from.

Okay.

It's, we actually have they the Biden administration put in a country of origin and piece of legislation. The problem is it's voluntary. I mean, it's it's useless. It's absolutely useless. We have a country of origin labeling on on beef and pork now, but it's it's strictly voluntary. So, you know, no one has to do it. They're not gonna do it. It just doesn't Mhmm. It's just

it wasn't a fix. I noticed that one of the things that, my that you had suggested and you just talked about is opening up government, state owned grasslands, for grazing. Is but the drought in South Texas seems to have a big impact on both all sorts of agriculture in the valley. Correct? Not only that, but Mexico not fulfilling its our water treaty, and so we're having problems with that as well. I think one of the one of the suggestions you had was maybe desalination.

Well, we're doing that. There's actually twenty cities across Texas that are using desal. None of them are on the coast. I live close to, a city called Granbury, Texas. They're it's on the Brazos River, and they have Lake Granbury, but you can't use the water out of that. The Brazos River is salty. You can't irrigate out of it. You can't but So they put in a a it's not as salty as ocean water, so it's pretty cheap to clean up. So they put in a desal plant, and they're now they're able to use their lake water, which was not an option before. We went into war with Mexico. We finally got them to come around, thanks for the so Donald Trump's tariffs. He'd threatened them with tariffs. They are now releasing water, that they've held back. They've agreed to pay their their, overdue bill and and complete the the next five years in a timely manner. So like there's two lakes on, the Rio Grande River, Lake Falcon and Lake Amistad. So in the last two, two to four weeks, though both those lakes have risen about two foot. That's that's a lot of water. And not only are they releasing water into the lake, they usually, they would own half water in in the lakes, and they've given us a large portion of the water that's in the lake that that rightfully was theirs, but they're beating it over to us. So

What do you think are are are there any specific actions that the federal government needs to take in terms of addressing this with the the beef packers? I know that that there have been a number of lawsuits and settlements in the past that didn't seem to have an impact. What do you think what do you think needs to happen in order to really turn this around?