Farmers Are Panic-Buying to Keep America’s 95 Million Cows Fed

Days after President Trump extended America’s quarantine guidelines, Tyler Beaver, the 31-year-old founder of brokerage Beaf Cattle Co., couldn’t get hold of the rations that feed his clients’ cows. He’d already tried sellers in the traditional producing areas of the U.S. such as Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, only to find they were mostly sold out. Soon, in a bid to connect his customers with a feed mill still willing to sell, he changed strategy and tried to pull feed from the Delta region, hundreds of miles away—again without luck.

Just as virus-spooked consumers have rushed to grocery stores to stockpile everything from toilet paper to pasta, farmers raising America’s cattle, hogs, and chickens have filled their bins with feed, fearing the spread of the coronavirus would disrupt their supply chains. “I’ve had some calls from customers of mine looking for feed because the mills are out,” says the Fayetteville, Ark.-based Beaver. “There’s a rush to buy just because of the uncertainty in the market. They just don’t want to be caught without.”