Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about China's beef with the U.S.

China has halted U.S. beef purchases.

Australia is filling the gap.

That's leaving U.S. cattle ranchers concerned and has left those people near, but not in the cattle industry,

wondering why it matters as much as it seems to. Quote, I've got a question that you might be

able to help with. It's economics and ranching. I live in cattle country, and a lot of people

are worried about China boycotting our beef.

Most of them are Trump voters, so this is a real leopard meatface moment.

But when I look at the numbers, it seems like they're panicking over nothing.

Our exports to China aren't huge.

Are they worried over nothing, or is this really going to hurt them just to say this up front none of our animals become food okay so the u.s exports a bit more than a billion and a half dollars worth of

beef to china that sounds like a lot but beef is huge in the.S., and it's a very small percentage of the total.

The problem is that the money isn't equally split.

My guess is that you're around actual ranchers.

The packers and the processors don't have much to worry about from this.

Shows like Yellowstone have made a lot of people think that the average rancher

is rich. That's not really the case. Sure, you have ranches like the four-sixes with thousands of

head of cattle, but most cattle operations are family owned, with less than 50 cows. Cow profitability

varies substantially year-to and region to region.

But the average annual return after variable costs is about $124 per cow.

You still have fixed costs after that.

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