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dan osborn
Investigation Shows How Decades of Corporate Consolidation Have Devastated US Cattle Ranchers
"The marketplace is fundamentally broken," one rancher explained.
Dec 23, 2025
Even as US beef prices have continued to surge, American cattle ranchers have come under increased financial pressure—and a new report from More Perfect Union claims that this is due in part to industry consolidation in the meat-packing industry.
Bill Bullard, the CEO of the trade association R-CALF USA, explained to More Perfect Union that cattle ranchers are essentially at the bottom of the pyramid in the beef-producing process, while the top is occupied by "four meat packers controlling 80% of the market."
"It's there that the meat packers are able to exert their market power in order to leverage down the price that the cattle feeder receives for the animals," Bullard said.
To illustrate the impact this has had on farmers, Bullard pointed out that cattle producers in 1980 received 63 cents for every dollar paid by consumers for beef, whereas four decades later they were receiving just 37 cents for every dollar.
"That allocation has flipped on its head because the marketplace is fundamentally broken," Bullard told More Perfect Union.
Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, recently highlighted the role played by the four big meatpacking companies—Tyson, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS—in hurting US ranchers.
Writing on her Substack page earlier this month, Huffman zeroed in on Tyson's recent decision to close one of its meatpacking plants in Lexington, Nebraska to demonstrate the outsize power that big corporations have over the US food supply.
The Lexington plant employs more than 3,000 people and is capable of processing 5,000 head of cattle a day, and its closure is expected to both devastate the local economy and have a major impact on US ranchers throughout the region.
Huffman noted a report from the Associated Press estimating that the Lexington plant's closure, combined with projected job cuts at a Tyson plant in Amarillo, Texas, could cut national beef processing capacity by up to 9%.
"Ranchers were already dealing with high costs, drought, and years of uneven prices," Huffman wrote. "Now they face even less competition for their cattle. When there are fewer packers active in the market, ranchers have less bargaining power, and cattle prices fall even as beef prices in grocery stores stay near record highs."
Dan Osborn, an independent US Senate candidate running in Nebraska, has made the dangers of corporate consolidation a central theme of his campaign, and on Monday he released a video explaining why he spends so much time talking about monopolies, particularly in the agricultural industry.
"If you're a farmer, your inputs, your seed, your chemicals, you have to buy from monopolies," he said. "Sygenta, Chinese-owned company you've got to buy your seed from, they control and manipulate that market. And then when your production's over and you're selling it, you're selling it to monopolies as well."
Want to know why I talk about MONOPOLIES all the time? This is why. 👇 pic.twitter.com/MuYh0gZRVr
— Dan Osborn (@osbornforne) December 22, 2025
Osborn said that the trend of industry consolidation wasn't just limited to agriculture, but is now moving forward with major railroad and media mergers.
"We need to create an economic environment in this country that favors competition," he said. "That's what a free market is. A free market isn't three or four big people or big corporations controlling everything."
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With GOP 'Looking at' Tyson's Alleged Market Manipulation, Nebraska Candidate Osborn Says 'Enforce the Law'
"Candidate for Senate Dan Osborn is already doing more for the people affected by the Tyson closure than the current Nebraska senators," said a worker rights advocate.
Dec 12, 2025
Instead of "another investigation" into possible wrongdoing by meatpacking giant Tyson, independent US Senate candidate Dan Osborn is demanding that elected officials in Nebraska simply "pick up the damn phone" and demand action from the Trump administration following the company's closure of one of the nation's largest meat processing plants in what one antitrust expert said was a clear-cut case of market manipulation.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), whom Osborn is challenging in the 2026 election, said Thursday that his team is "taking a look at any allegation of wrongdoing" by Tyson, weeks after the company announced its massive plant in Lexington, Nebraska is set to close in January—putting more than 3,000 people in a town of 11,000 out of work.
The closure comes months after Tyson boosted its stock buybacks and following an announcement that its adjusted operating income had increased by 26% compared to 2024. Tyson controls about 80% of the US beef market along with three other companies, and the Department of Justice is investigating whether the four corporations are colluding to keep beef prices high.
Despite near-record high prices in the industry, Tyson said last week it was closing the Lexington plant and scaling back operations at its facility in Amarillo, Texas to "right-size its beef business and position it for long-term success."
Basel Musharbash, an antitrust lawyer at Antimonopoly Counsel in Paris, Texas, attended a press conference with Osborn across the street from the Lexington plant this week and said that the "legal analysis here is pretty straightforward" regarding whether Tyson has engaged in market manipulation.
“The Lexington plant accounts for around 5% of the nation’s cattle," said Musharbash. "By shutting down a plant that slaughters such a large portion of the cattle in this region and the country, Tyson will single-handedly reshape the nation’s cattle markets from boom to bust.”
Ranchers will be forced "to accept lower prices, and Tyson will be able to make higher profits," he said.
Osborn and Musharbash say Tyson has broken the 2021 Packers and Stockyards Act, which prohibits meatpackers from engaging "in any course of business or [doing] any act for the purpose or with the effect of manipulating or controlling prices."
Addressing Ricketts on social media, Osborn said Tyson workers "don’t need another useless congressional report that leads to nothing. We need ACTION!"
"Tyson workers and Nebraska ranchers need you to demand that [US Agriculture] Secretary Brooke Rollins immediately initiate an action to hold Tyson accountable for any market manipulation," he said.
The USDA told the Nebraska Examiner this week that it is monitoring "the closure of the plant to ensure compliance with the Packers and Stockyards Act," but Musharbash said Rollins can and should "compel Tyson to either keep the plant open or sell the plant to an upstart rival who will introduce honest competition into this cartelized industry."
"There is nothing left for Ricketts to 'look into,' and Nebraskans certainly don’t need some intern on Ricketts’ staff to write a research paper about this issue for the next six months while Tyson hollows out the Lexington community for its selfish gain," added Musharbash. "Nebraska—and this whole country—deserves better leaders than this."
Osborn pointed out Thursday that Ricketts has taken more than $70,000 in campaign donations from Tyson.
“The people of Lexington need their elected officials to fight now more than ever,” Osborn said at the press conference this week. “The law that’s been on the books for over 100 years should be enforced... So pick up the damn phone, call Brooke Rollins, and get the USDA to enforce the law.”
By visiting Lexington and speaking out against Tyson's gutting of thousands of jobs, former Federal Trade Commission member Alvaro Bedoya said that "candidate for Senate Dan Osborn is already doing more for the people affected by the Tyson closure than the current Nebraska senators."
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'Rigged System': Pro-Union Nebraska Candidate Shreds Private Equity for Jacking Up Home Prices
"Hard work should lead to home ownership, not permanent rental payments to corporate landlords," said Osborn.
Jul 21, 2025
Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn, a mechanic and former labor union leader, posted a lengthy thread on the social media platform X on Monday in which he discussed the role that private equity firms play in increasing the cost of housing in the United States.
Osborn, who earlier this month announced he'd be running against Republican incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts, drew a line between the lack of affordable housing and private equity firms that have gone on a buying spree of residential properties in recent years.
" Wall Street discovered they could make billions by turning homes into commodities," Osborn explained. "Since 2008, private equity firms and hedge funds have gobbled up hundreds of thousands of single-family homes—the exact starter homes that young families used to buy. Because of their financial strength and ability to pay in cash, larger investors can out-compete first-time homebuyers, making it harder for real people without millions to buy homes in neighborhoods where these corporate giants are active."
Osborn then pointed to reporting that the Flat Water Free Press did three years ago about how real estate firm VineBrook Homes aggressively bought up properties in Omaha, Nebraska, and then proceeded to evict current residents while also jacking up rents.
"From January 2020 through September 2021, VineBrook bought more Douglas County single family homes than anyone else, according to data from the Douglas County Registrar and Assessor of Deeds," the publication wrote. "All told, VineBrook Homes has bought up some 250 houses in the metro area since October 2019, a company spokesman said."
Osborn made the case that what VineBrook has done in Omaha is part of a concerted strategy by investors across the country to buy up single-family houses and raise rents for tenants. He then linked to a recent report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from earlier this year that found 30% of single family homes in the Atlanta metro area are now owned by investors.
"The shift to these corporate landlords almost NEVER brings an improvement in housing conditions or rent prices," Osborn charged. "New layers of bureaucracy and random new fees always seem to appear... And back in Nebraska, here's what the VineBrook situation was like for the North Omaha residents: '...tenants complained about unresolved maintenance issues, unfounded evictions, aggressive rent collection tactics, and poor customer service.'"
Osborn emphasized that he was "open" to a number of ideas to remedy this situation, including the removal of "unfair tax advantages that give private equity an edge over individual homebuyers"; ending "taxpayer subsidies for giant corporate mergers that create housing monopolies"; barring foreign investors from "buying up American neighborhoods"; and enacting "reasonable limits on how many homes Wall Street can control in any one community."
"Every kid deserves what we had—a real shot at the American Dream," he wrote in conclusion. "Hard work should lead to home ownership, not permanent rental payments to corporate landlords. Time to fix this rigged system."
Osborn kicked off his Senate bid two weeks ago by ripping into the budget megabill recently passed by Republicans that slashed roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade and enacted tax cuts that are heavily tilted toward the wealthiest taxpayers.
He launched his campaign following an unexpectedly close race with Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) last year, which he lost by fewer than 7 points despite being heavily outspent.
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