When Howard and Vicki White opened White's Meat Market in December of 1984, ribeye steaks could be bought for roughly $7 a pound.
An inspection of the shelves Monday revealed the price has more than doubled in three decades. The same cut of meat was going for $15.99 a pound.
"I’ve been doing this 30 years, and the prices are as high as they’ve ever been," Howard White said. "There's nothing you can do except raise your price. The consumer doesn't understand."
It's not just steak either. The USDA reported late last week prices for meat animals are up 29 percent from last year. Hogs are $17 more per 100 pounds than a year ago, while poultry and egg prices are up $14 from 2013.
Beef? It's a whopping $35 higher per 100 pounds than what it was a year ago. Ground beef prices are at their highest level since 1984.
What's causing this?
Aside from basic inflation as time moves forward, the trickle-down effects of the 2012 drought are still being felt in a dramatic way.
Corn crops used to feed USDA choice livestock, which produces the only type of meat White will sell in his three stores, were hurt immensely by the scorching heat that plagued the corn belt.
That pushed the price of corn up to over $8 a bushel. Farmers struggled to profit from cattle with the cost to feed that high, and as a result, thinned their herds. It takes two years for a cow to be ready for market from its birthdate, and there's no quick rebound in market prices. Increases in population and the globalization of the market allow packers to send meat to foreign countries at a much higher rate than 30 years ago.
"Herds are as small as they've been since 1951," White explained. "There are no numbers out there on the cattle because there's so few on the market. That's what drives the prices up. There's nothing I can do about that as a business because we're at the mercy of the farmer. They're inseminating the cows as fast as they can because the price is so high. But, it takes two years to grow a cow."
As a result, consumers are switching from beef to pork, which affects supply and demand, causing the price of pork to increase as well.
White has seen a 20-percent increase in lunch meat sales as customers seek alternatives to high beef prices. Steak sales are down 30-to-35 percent.
"You lose a lot of product," he said. "You have two days to sell the ribeyes out there, and they are $15 or $16 per pound. You wind up grinding it up and selling it for $3.99 a pound. It's hurting the bottom line a great deal. We have to adjust our pricing accordingly, but we will not sacrifice our quality for price."
The 2012 drought left the grain market strained too. At Kokomo Grain, demand outstripped supply for three straight seasons. This season will mark the first since the drought that Kokomo Grain will start restocking its storage bins.
Ideal growing conditions this season have the industry anticipating a record bushel output for grain. In addition to its storage bins, Kokomo Grain also hopes to fill its flat storage building, which can hold upward of 5 million bushels of corn.
"But, it's not in the bins yet," general manager Tom Madru said. "2012 got us behind the eight ball, but we've been in a high-demand market for several years. The drought contributed to it because we have high demand. We weren't building a lot of inventory, but this year we will build quite a bit."
The drought pushing bushel prices through the roof made for a profitable situation for grain farmers, however.
“They came through some really good times the last few years when prices were up," Madru said. "They made more money in a lot of cases because their yields may have been down, but the price more than made up for it. Farmers are coming off of some good years, so pocketbooks are in pretty good shape based on what they've done the past few years."
That's probably for the best. With bushel outputs expected to be at record highs this fall, the price per bushel is anticipated to continue its downward trend. Corn was going for $3.43 a bushel Friday, 43 percent lower than what it was a year ago. That price is expected to continue to plummet if the current crops produce as well as expected.
"The next few years are looking pretty tough," Madru concluded. "If you look at this year alone, they may not be making much money at these prices unless the yields are really high. That’s a bad thing for farmers, because unless they’ve done a good job marketing their corn [selling it at a higher price than what’s being offered now] — this crop is huge all across the corn belt, so the price is going down."