Commentary
Last night, just under 50 people gathered at Sovereignty Ranch for a Brownstone Supper Club. We shared a farm tour, a seven-course meal, cocktails, and a lively Q&A following a talk from Nate Sheets, who recently defeated Sid Miller in the Republican primary for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.
Of major concern in the room was water, and a lot was said about that, which I will write about in another article. But in a room full of ranchers, the conversation quickly turned to beef. Questions moved toward processing, bottlenecks, and the deeper issue of how farmers can survive in the current system.
Sheets returned again and again to a simple but powerful question: How do we make farmers price makers instead of price takers? It is the right question, and for many in the room, the assumed answer was more infrastructure. More USDA-inspected processing facilities, more capital investment, and more expansion of the current system.
But I raised my hand because I believe we are overlooking something much simpler. We do not necessarily need more infrastructure. In many cases, the infrastructure already exists.
Across Texas and much of the country, small-town custom slaughterhouses are common. These facilities are already inspected at the state level and are regularly used by families processing their own animals, by hunters bringing in deer, and by 4-H students completing livestock projects. They are not unsafe or unregulated; they are part of the fabric of rural communities, quietly serving people every day.
The contradiction becomes clear when you compare them to the grocery store. The meat counter at your local store is inspected by the local health department, yet these same types of locally inspected facilities cannot legally process meat for public sale if they fall under custom slaughter designation. Facilities that could use the business, and that already exist across rural America, are effectively sidelined by a rule that no longer reflects how people actually buy food.
Under current federal law, meat processed at custom facilities cannot be sold. It must go back to the individual who owned the animal prior to slaughter. This is why farmers rely on the workaround of selling a quarter, half, or whole animal before processing, so the buyer technically owns it. The system functions, but it does not function well, and it excludes most consumers. Someone living in an apartment who simply wants a few steaks is not going to purchase a quarter of a cow.
What we are left with is a system where the infrastructure exists, the demand exists, and the farmers exist, but the law prevents them from connecting in a straightforward way.
This is where the PRIME Act comes in. Championed for years by Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the bill offers a simple solution rooted in a basic principle: if meat does not cross state lines, it does not require federal oversight at the same level as interstate commerce.
Not Infrastructure, but Access
The bill has been introduced multiple times but has never been signed into law. Lawmakers have not had the will to push it forward. On the Senate side, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has also advocated for similar reforms, signaling that interest in decentralizing meat processing is not limited to one chamber. More recently, Massie has indicated that language from the PRIME Act has been included in the base text of the current Farm Bill in the House. There has been no clear indication that similar language is included in the Senate version. Whether it remains through the full legislative process is uncertain, but the idea is gaining traction because it addresses a real bottleneck with an existing solution.
The issue is not a lack of capacity; it is a lack of access. Today, the meat industry is highly consolidated, with four major packers controlling the majority of beef processing in the United States. Decades ago, farmers received about 70 percent of the consumer dollar while packers took roughly 30 percent. That balance has now reversed, leaving farmers with shrinking margins and fewer options.
At the same time, the number of farms continues to decline, and that includes ranches. Cattle operations are disappearing alongside row crop farms, even as demand for beef remains strong. The United States has lost well over 100,000 farms in the last several years alone, with the steepest losses coming from small, family-scale operations. In Texas, the trend is even more immediate, with an estimated 64 farms and ranches disappearing every week.
Sheets shared the story of a Texas rice farmer whose family has worked the same land for five generations. The farm was once passed down debt-free, but over time debt accumulated as costs rose and margins tightened. In the last two years, that farmer sold his rice for 40 percent of what it cost to produce it, and none of his children are interested in taking over after watching that struggle.
Faced with that reality, it becomes clear why so many farmers accept offers from developers or data centers. When losses stack year after year, the decision is less about legacy and more about survival. We often talk about preserving the family farm, but we rarely address the structural barriers that make farming unprofitable in the first place.
