If you walked right past the meat aisle on your last trip to the grocery store, you’re not the only one. Beef is starting to feel like a luxury as prices stay at record highs, and there’s no end in sight for markups.
Ground beef reached a record price of $6.90 per pound in April, nearly a dollar more than last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Beef steaks, which cost an average of $12.80 per pound in May, are up 16% from a year ago.
Prices have decreased slightly since April, according to the BLS, but don’t expect ground beef to return to $4 or $5 per pound anytime soon. In its most recent forecast, the USDA estimated that beef prices will climb 10.1% in 2026, though price inflation could vary between 2.8 to 18.3%.
It’s easy to point out supply-side issues as the reason for higher prices. Beef cattle inventory is at a 75-year low, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, due to persistent drought, high interest rates, and rising production costs. As of January, the cattle inventory is down 8.2 million animals or 8.6% from 2020, a year before a persistent and extreme drought began to shrink herd sizes. Cattle numbers are expected to stay down until at least 2028, according to the Farm Bureau.
But the largest contributor to high prices is ever-increasing demand from American consumers, said Glynn Tonsor, professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.
“Meat is having a moment,” Tonsor told Fortune. Growing beef demand is part of a larger protein-frenzy in the U.S. in recent years as Americans turn to high-protein foods in an attempt to improve their health. New federal dietary guidelines recommend “prioritizing protein” and include it in every meal.
Higher supply and demand are ultimately the reason for higher prices, explained Tonsor, who runs the Meat Demand Monitor, a project out of Kansas State that has surveyed the U.S. public about their preferences, views, and demand for meat every month since February 2020.
Self-reported rates of being vegan or vegetarian have also gone down, according to the monitor. In 2020, 14% of Americans reported being vegan or vegetarian. In 2025, just 7% of people reported being vegan or vegetarian, signaling higher interest in consuming meat and other animal products.
“Domestic U.S. consumer demand for beef has grown each of the last two years, and that economic force has the effect of pulling up prices,” Tonsor said. “That’s actually a bigger economic force of your higher prices today than anything on the supply side.”
Despite having fewer cows, the U.S. has produced more beef than before to meet high demand.
“We’re getting more beef per cow because of the offspring. We’re making them bigger and selling them at a heavier weight than ever before, and we’re importing more beef from abroad as part of that.” To meet high demand, meatpackers have been importing more beef from countries such as Argentina and Mexico. Imports this year have increased 11% year-to-date as of April 11, compared to 2025, according to the USDA.
Protein prices started to go down earlier this year, before production costs increased as the war in Iran raised energy prices. Average gas prices in the U.S. have held steady over $4 per gallon since March, and even with a deal to end the war in sight, experts and government officials believe that they will stay high for the next several months, if not until 2027.
High energy prices will have reverberations on every part of the beef production process, from cow feed to transportation costs to meat processing and refrigeration at the grocery store. Increased transportation costs are going to hit beef consumers soon, Tonsor said. But price increases could continue well into next year due to higher fertilizer prices, which will raise corn and cow feed prices. This will likely lead to weaker production growth because production costs are higher, no matter how much Americans want more beef.
“Not everybody will expand that would have before, so you may have less eventual beef show up for consumers than you would have before,” Tonsor said.
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on April 22, 2026.
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