No. 3 · October 2026 · From Farm Animal Transparency (FAT)
The semi-monthly note for farms selling grass-fed and grass-finished beef
By Dirk Adams, with the assistance of AI
• We read the websites of 381 ranches that sell beef direct, in 49 states. Here is what they charge, cut by cut.
• About one ranch in eight finishes its grass-fed beef on grain, and the ranches that sell both kinds show what grass-finishing is worth.
• Ranches are already taking 2027 deposits. If you will have beef to sell next year, say so now.
A grass-fed and grass-finished1 ranch that sells direct sets its own prices, and its customers check them against the next ranch’s website or the grocery store. Last issue promised the October recount. On October 26, FAT read the websites of 381 ranches that sell beef direct, in 49 states, and added the 152 that were new to the survey, which now counts 4,001 direct sellers. This Bulletin shows what those ranches charge and how they sell, so you can check your own price list against your neighbors’.
1 Why both words: under federal labeling rules neither word alone settles what the animal ate — “grass-finished” permits grain feeding earlier in life, and “grass-fed” can be a partial claim. Together, grass-fed and grass-finished is the seller’s plain statement that the animal was raised and finished on grass, and that two-word claim is what this survey tracks.
Why 381 and not 4,001. The 4,001 is everyone the survey has found since August that advertises grass-fed beef sold direct, mostly through farm directories and state programs. Many of them have no website of their own, or a site with no prices, so they can only be checked by email or phone. The 381 are the ranches whose own websites we opened and read on one day, October 26: 229 already in the survey, as a fresh check on their prices, and 152 found for the first time. That makes the 381 a one-day snapshot of what ranch websites ask this fall, not a census of every grass-fed seller.
The October recount · what ranch websites charge this fall
1 · What a pound of grass-finished beef sells for
Of the 381 ranches, 247 say plainly that their beef is grass-finished, and 101 of those post a ground-beef price by the pound. The middle ranch asks $11.50; half ask between $9.50 and $12.99 (FAT sweep, October 26, 2026). Steaks run in proportion.
What the middle grass-finished ranch asks per pound, cut by cut, on 381 ranch websites read October 26, 2026, compared to the September survey
| Cut | Oct 26 | Sept | vs. Sept | Oct: middle half · ranches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ground beef | $11.50 | $10.00 | ▲ 15% | $9.50–12.99 · 101 ranches |
| Sirloin | $19.95 | $18.99 | ▲ 5% | $16.25–24.00 · 59 ranches |
| NY strip | $25.00 | $24.86 | ▲ 1% | $20.00–30.15 · 60 ranches |
| Ribeye | $27.00 | $28.00 | ▼ 4% | $22.50–34.00 · 57 ranches |
| Tenderloin / filet | $36.48 | $35.00 | ▲ 4% | $30.00–52.00 · 58 ranches |
Middle price per pound (median). October: ranches whose own websites say grass-finished and post a price for the cut, read October 26, 2026. September: the qualifying farms in Bulletin No. 1 (September 7 survey pass), 33 to 50 farms per cut. Only prices posted by the pound, or by the package with a stated weight, are counted.
The spread is wide. Ribeye runs from $14.99 a pound at Wailua Meat Co. on Kauai to $57.49 at Tussock Sedge Farm in Pennsylvania. Against September, steaks are within about 5% either way, and ground beef is $1.50 higher. Read that with care: the two columns overlap but are not the same ranches, so the differences are not one ranch raising its price. Much of the ground-beef gap is which ranches were counted: the ones added this month more often sell through online shops that ship, and shipped beef is priced higher than pickup beef.
2 · A side of beef: about $7.50 a hanging pound
Hanging weight is the carcass weight before cutting. Of the grass-fed ranches that sell sides by hanging weight, 43 post the price. The middle is $7.50 a hanging pound; half ask between $6.45 and $8.50 (FAT sweep, October 26). Some of those prices include the butcher and some do not.
Here is the arithmetic for a half that hangs 300 pounds. At $7.50, the ranch’s check is $2,250. If the buyer also pays the processor about $1.40 a hanging pound, as Virginia Sweet Grass Farm quotes, that adds $420, so the customer spends $2,670. If the half yields about 195 pounds of packaged beef, the customer is paying about $13.69 a take-home pound.
That 195 pounds is 65% of hanging weight, the usual figure for a mix of cuts. Nebraska Extension’s worked example puts an 880-pound carcass at about 65% boneless trimmed beef (Saner and Buseman, 2024), and UW–Madison Extension’s at 67% for a mix of bone-in and boneless cuts. Ask for everything boneless and the yield drops to about 57% to 62% (Nebraska Extension, 2024; Mississippi State Extension, 2024), and the same $2,670 works out to about $15.61 a take-home pound.
So a ranch that quotes $13 or $15 a pound for a share is not necessarily asking more than one at $7.50 hanging. Ranches now quote sides three ways: by hanging weight, by packaged weight, and at a flat price (E Bar Cattle Company in Florida sells a half for $2,999). Customers compare the numbers anyway, so state the basis and what the price includes in the same sentence as the price.
Sources: FAT sweep, October 26, 2026, prices as posted on each ranch’s site; Saner and Buseman, “How Many Pounds of Meat Can We Expect From a Beef Animal?”, Nebraska Extension in Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, August 21, 2024; Cauffman, Olson, Halfman and Ihde, “How much meat should a beef animal yield?”, UW–Madison Extension; Karisch, Poss and Rutherford, “How Much Meat to Expect from a Beef Animal: Farm-Direct Beef,” Mississippi State Extension P3489, 2024. The Nebraska and Wisconsin yield percentages are FAT’s arithmetic from their worked figures.
3 · About one ranch in eight finishes its grass-fed beef on grain
Of the 381 ranches, 45 say on their websites that the beef they call grass-fed is finished or supplemented on grain (FAT sweep, October 26). Most say it openly, as in “grass fed and grain finished.” Several sell both kinds side by side, and their price lists show what finishing on grass is worth to the same customer.
What grass-finishing adds to the price of a side at ranches that sell both kinds, $ per hanging pound, October 26, 2026
| Ranch | Premium | What the price list says |
|---|---|---|
| Craig Angus Ranch, Colorado | +$1.19 | grass-fed $7.99 a hanging pound against $6.80 grain-finished, processing included — $654.50 more on a 550-pound whole |
| Hoggan Ranch, Utah | +$0.75 | grass-finished upgrade $7.50 a pound against $6.75 for a standard grain-finished quarter |
| Oak Island Farms, Oregon | $0.00 | one price, $5.50 a hanging pound, whichever finish the buyer chooses |
Where the premium is posted, it runs 75 cents to $1.19 a hanging pound. If you finish on grass and price the same as the grain-finished ranch down the road, you are leaving that money on the table.
Source: FAT sweep, October 26, 2026, from each ranch’s own price page.
4 · Sold out, and booking 2027
Of the 381 ranches, 101, or 27%, show beef or shares marked sold out, and 33 already mention 2027 (FAT sweep, October 26). E Bar Cattle Company in Florida posts “sold out for the remainder of 2026.” Grand View Beef in Iowa is booking shares for June and July 2027 at $9 a hanging pound. Rocky Meadow Farm in New Hampshire has posted that its side price rises from $8.75 to $8.95 a hanging pound on January 1, 2027. In Georgia, TRUC paused most deliveries on September 18, citing drought and rising prices.
The customers are there. If you will have finished cattle next year, open your 2027 deposits now and put the date and the price on the page.
Source: FAT sweep, October 26, 2026.
5 · Your own cull cow, priced as hamburger
A cull cow you keep and grind has a cost per pound of hamburger, and you can set it against any price a customer sees. Packers bid a national average of $247.50 per hundredweight of carcass for boning cows (85% lean, 500 pounds and up) on October 27, down from $280.00 on September 11 (USDA AMS, Daily Cow and Bull Bids, LM_CT138).
Here is the arithmetic for a cow that hangs 600 pounds (my assumption for a sound grass cow). To a packer she is worth at most 600 × $2.475 = $1,485. Processing averages $0.94 a hanging pound plus a $100 to $150 slaughter fee (USDA National Grass Fed Beef Report, Q3 2026), so kill, grind and packaging run about $689. A cow carcass yields roughly 63% boneless meat (Scott et al., Translational Animal Science, 2024), or about 378 pounds of hamburger. Processing alone is $1.82 a pound; add the $1,485 you gave up by not selling her, and each pound of hamburger costs you $5.75.
What a pound of hamburger from your own cull cow costs you, against what shoppers are offered, in $/lb · October 2026
| Step | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Processing only | $1.82 | Kill, grind and package a 600-lb carcass at USDA’s average processing charge, spread over 378 lb of hamburger |
| Processing plus the cow’s packer value | $5.75 | Adds the $247.50/cwt national packer bid for boning cows (October 27); your break-even price |
| Supermarket conventional ground 80–89%, advertised | $5.70 | USDA weekly feature survey, 1–2 lb packs, 4,457 stores (week of October 19) |
| Supermarket organic grass-fed ground 80–89%, advertised | $7.26 | USDA weekly feature survey, 1–2 lb packs, 4,298 stores (week of October 19) |
| Supermarket grass-fed ground 90%+ lean, advertised | $8.51 | USDA weekly feature survey, 1–2 lb packs, 319 stores (week of October 19) |
| Ranch-direct grass-finished ground, middle ranch | $11.50 | FAT sweep, 101 ranches posting a price (October 26) |
The 600-lb carcass and the processing charge are assumptions for illustration; your processor’s grind-only rate may be lower than USDA’s all-purpose average, and a thinner cow yields less. The packer bid is a ceiling: trucking and any order buyer’s margin come out before the rancher is paid.
At $5.75 a pound, cow hamburger breaks even with the packer and sits just above the supermarket’s advertised conventional ground at $5.70. Sold at $8.00 a pound, the 378 pounds bring $3,024, or $850 more than the packer’s ceiling after processing; at the $11.50 that ranches ask for young grass-finished ground, they bring $2,173 more. Cow beef is not young grass-finished beef, so price it and label it as ground beef from your own cows, somewhere between the grocery ad and the ranch price.
Sources: USDA AMS Daily Cow and Bull Bids, Plant Delivered, Dressed Basis (LM_CT138), September 11 and October 27, 2026; USDA AMS National Grass Fed Beef Report, Q3 2026; Scott et al., Translational Animal Science, 2024; USDA AMS Weekly Grocery Store Beef Feature Activity (AMS 3228), week of October 19, 2026; FAT sweep, October 26, 2026.
Besides the research series, farms that state their claim and prices appear in the FAT App — the free iPhone app that reads a meat label at the counter and tells the shopper, on the spot, what the producer discloses about how the animal was raised, fed and processed. It is the only label scanner built around producer disclosure rather than brand marketing, and direct sellers who disclose are what it exists to surface. Free on the App Store: apps.apple.com/app/id6757405468
Rancher to rancher — I’m Dirk Adams, a 40-year cattle rancher near Wilsall, Montana. Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) is a nationwide, free, public-interest research project on what meat labels claim and what producers actually disclose — free to read, no advertising, ever. The full Grass-Fed Beef Research Series is at farmanimaltransparency.com/fat-research. If anything above misreads your ranch, or your prices have changed, email me at dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com.
Dirk Adams
Farm Animal Transparency