The U.S. Faces A "Historic" Cattle Shortage

The U.S. Faces A "Historic" Cattle Shortage

MICHAEL SNYDER/

A multi-year cattle shortage has pushed the price of beef into very painful territory. In fact, in some areas of the country the price of ground beef now exceeds the federal minimum wage. This is the first time in U.S. history that this has ever happened. At the start of 2026, there were only 86.2 million head of cattle and calves in the United States. 

That is the smallest the national herd has been since 1951. Just think about that for a moment. This is an enormous problem because in 1951 there were 154 million people living in this nation, but there are 342 million people living in this nation today.

We are being told that we are facing a "historic" cattle shortage, and it is causing some of the biggest meatpackers in the country to shut down facilities...

America's ranchers are facing their smallest cattle herd in 75 years, a shortage now rippling from pastures to some of the nation's largest meatpackers.

Tyson Foods announced last week that it will close beef facilities in Illinois and Utah and pursue the sale of another in Washington as it reshapes its beef business amid what the company called one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced. Tyson said recent USDA data suggest supply constraints are likely to persist.

According to the USDA, the size of the U.S. cattle herd has fallen by 8 million just since 2019...

USDA data shows the U.S. entered 2026 with about 86.2 million cattle and calves, the smallest herd since the early 1950s. That's down from roughly 94.7 million cattle and calves in 2019, a decline of more than 8 million animals.

This is another instance where the trend is not our friend.

So why is this happening?

The answer to that question is very clear.

Ranchers throughout the middle of the nation have been dealing with severe drought...

"The biggest thing has been drought," Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University, previously told Fox News Digital.

He said years of dry weather have depleted grasslands across the West and Plains, leaving ranchers without enough feed or water to sustain their herds. Many have been forced to sell cattle early, including cows needed to produce the next generation of calves, making the road to recovery even longer.

This isn't a new phenomenon.

In fact, according to Wikipedia a multi-decade drought in the Southwest actually began in the year 2000...

The southwestern North American megadrought is a multidecadal drought in the southwestern region of North America that began in 2000. The 2000-2021 period was the driest 22-year period the region had experienced since at least 800 AD. The megadrought contributed to the first-ever declaration of a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the two largest reservoirs in the United States by storage capacity. Climate models project increased drought risk and drier soil-moisture conditions in the region through the end of the 21st century.

There had been hope that perhaps the region may be pulling out the megadrought, but then last winter was the driest winter that many areas of the Southwest have experienced in recorded history.

Drought is hammering pastures and rangeland across the Plains and Southwest, pushing conditions significantly below where they stood a year ago.

The states with the highest percentage of pasture and range in the very-poor-to-poor category are in those two regions, according to USDA's weekly Crop Progress report released on Monday. Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming have the highest percentage of pastures in this category at 73%, 72% and 71%, respectively. These states also lack pasture in the good-to-excellent category, with Nebraska and Colorado both at 8% and Wyoming at 4%.

The reason why all of us should deeply care about this is because the consequences are being keenly felt at the grocery store.

JPMorgan is concerned about the dual impact of the Super El Niño and the worldwide fertilizer shortage...

There are two prongs to JPMorgan's predicted food deficits: a fertilizer shortage and a monumental weather event.

And the Strait of Hormuz's closure wasn't just bad for gasoline prices. The strait also sees about a third of the world's nitrogen fertilizer -- an essential form of fertilizer for around half of the world's crops.

Nitrogen fertilizer shortages are a ticking time bomb. Because it's needed during the early stages of crop growth, we could still be feeling the effects of a shortage as much as a year later.

Most experts are still anticipating that supplies of fertilizer will be flowing normally through the Strait of Hormuz once we get to next spring.

Of course if that doesn't actually happen we will have a real nightmare on our hands.

Already, we are facing a harvest season in the fall in which yields will be way down all over the planet thanks to a lack of fertilizer.

The Coming Age Of Digital Surrogates

When AI Becomes You: The Coming Age Of Digital Surrogates

PNW STAFF

Mark Zuckerberg is describing a future in which artificial intelligence will do far more than answer questions or write emails. His vision is for virtually everyone to have an extraordinarily capable personal AI agent that understands them, knows their goals and understands "everything you care about."

According to Meta, that agent could work around the clock on your behalf, helping manage relationships, health, career, finances, your home and much more.

It sounds extraordinarily convenient.

But follow that vision to its logical conclusion and a much bigger question emerges:

What happens when AI stops merely assisting you and increasingly begins acting as you?

The Personal AI That Knows Everything

For a personal AI agent to become genuinely useful, it cannot know only the information contained in a few conversations.

It needs to know you.

Imagine an AI with access to years of emails and text messages, your calendar, photographs, purchases, financial records, location history, medical concerns, social connections, browsing habits and personal preferences.

It learns how you write.

It learns what you believe.

It learns whom you trust.

It learns what irritates you, frightens you and motivates you.

It may eventually understand your routines and preferences well enough to anticipate what you want before you even ask.

Meta has been explicit that its concept of personal superintelligence is intended to understand a user's world rather than simply respond to isolated prompts.

And that is where the dividing line between "assistant" and something much more consequential begins to disappear.

From Assistant To Agent

Today's AI largely waits for instructions.

Tomorrow's AI agents are being designed to act.

Instead of asking an AI how to find cheaper insurance, you could authorize it to find the policy, compare coverage, negotiate terms and complete the transaction.

Rather than helping write an email, it could simply manage routine correspondence.

It might schedule medical appointments, dispute bills, purchase airline tickets, manage investments, screen phone calls, answer customer-service inquiries or negotiate contracts.

Eventually your AI may communicate directly with someone else's AI.

Your agent negotiates with the insurance company's agent.

Your agent schedules an appointment with your doctor's agent.

Your agent discusses a potential job with an employer's recruiting agent.

Increasingly, machines could conduct transactions between themselves while humans simply approve the final result--or perhaps eventually establish rules allowing those agents to proceed without approval at all.

MORE...

SYRIA SHOWDOWN: Mossad Chief Spoke With Syrian FM Days Before Israeli Strike as Netanyahu Warns Türkiye

SYRIA SHOWDOWN: Mossad Chief Spoke With Syrian FM Days Before Israeli Strike as Netanyahu Warns Türkiye

YeshivaWorldNews

New details emerging from the dramatic Israeli strike in northern Syria reveal that Israel had repeatedly warned Damascus against allowing Türkiye to establish a significant military foothold in the country — including through a rare high-level contact between Mossad chief Roman Gofman and Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani just days before the attack.

According to Reuters, Gofman held a phone call with al-Shaibani on August 14, four days before the Israeli strike, with the two discussing Türkiye’s military presence on Syrian territory. The conversation was described as the first between Syria’s foreign minister and the head of the Mossad, and represents one of the highest-level contacts between Israel and Syria’s new government since the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Separately, Israeli officials reportedly delivered direct warnings to senior Syrian officials in the days leading up to the attack after Jerusalem learned that Türkiye intended to expand its military presence in Syria.

“We know the Turks are on the way. This is a violation of the status quo,” Israeli officials warned their Syrian counterparts.

Israel had concluded that Türkiye was apparently seeking to establish a permanent and substantial military presence in Syria and initially attempted to stop the move through diplomatic warnings.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday directly addressed the Turkish activity and the message Israel sought to send with the strike.

“We will not tolerate a Turkish military entrenchment that moves south. We have made this clear in general terms,” Netanyahu said.

“Now, we saw that there was an intention by Türkiye to establish itself in an airfield near Aleppo. And we delivered a message.”

“The message was delivered, but apparently they didn’t hear it,” Netanyahu continued. “So we made sure they understood it in a better way.”

The Israeli Air Force subsequently struck Syria’s Abu al-Duhur Air Base in the north of the country, approximately 70 kilometers east of the Turkish border. Israeli officials said Syria had violated an agreed security status quo by permitting Turkish forces to deploy at the airfield, and that the strike came after repeated Israeli warnings were ignored.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir toured southern Syria on Wednesday, a day after the strike, and warned that Israel would not allow hostile forces to establish themselves along its borders.

“We see what is happening and are following the changes on the Syrian front — we must prepare accordingly,” Zamir said.

“We will not allow hostile forces to establish themselves on our borders, and we will know how to use our strength precisely where necessary and when necessary.”

Zamir added that Israel remains engaged in a multi-front war and must maintain constant readiness.

“We are still in a multi-front war, alert and operating across all arenas. Escalation can develop in any one of them, and we must remain constantly prepared for that.”

The United States is now pushing quiet discussions aimed at renewing a mechanism designed to prevent accidental clashes between Israel and Syria, potentially including Türkiye as well.

WATCH: Netanyahu says that IDF 'made sure' Syria 'understood' that Turkey unwelcome in region

Nationwide blackout on deck?

Nationwide blackout on deck? Get ready for false flag attack on U.S. power grid, likely to be blamed on Iran

Leo Hohmann

...we see an article in today’s Daily Mail, that merits our attention. 

 The Daily Mail, like Fox, is a notorious pro-war, pro-deep state propaganda outlet read by millions of mostly right-wing Brits, Canadians and Americans, and in an article today it promotes the idea of the U.S. power grid being attacked and taken down by an outside entity.

The article, titled, Warning that mammoth nationwide blackout could last 18 MONTHS as power grid’s appalling weak spots exposed, tells you everything you need to know about what’s coming.

Remember, Klaus Schwab, former director of the World Economic Forum, said six years ago that a major cyber attack would hit the world and “the Covid-19 crisis would be seen, in this respect, as a small disturbance, in comparison.”

These demons always tell us their plans ahead of time. Hollywood is another favorite tool for telegraphing their plans. How many movies were churned out about society-altering pandemics before they launched Covid?

They’ve been telegraphing a debilitating cyber attack for almost as long but that still hasn’t happened. I’d say it’s overdue.

The time to prepare for it is now. Previous government studies from years ago have warned this exact same scenario is likely and that a nationwide outage of one year or longer would result in 90 percent of Americans losing their lives.

The Daily Mail article says the entire power grid could be collapsed, simply by taking out nine key substations.

Leo’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Below is a brief excerpt:

The United States is at risk of a nationwide blackout that could last 18 months, according to the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Jon Wellinghoff became aware of the alleged vulnerability after a shooting at a Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s San Jose substation, according to the The New York Times Magazine.

He conducted a power flow analysis that modeled the large-scale effects of knocking out the most critical substation in each of America’s three power grids: the Western, Eastern and Texasinterconnections. He said this led him to discover just how easy it would be to cripple America’s power supply.

“We came up with some very astounding numbers,” Wellinghoff said. “If you knock out nine total substations among these three grids, you can black out the entire United States.”

Their quoted expert, Jon Wellinghoff, says it’s so easy to pull off that “a bunch of 12-year-olds with the internet could do pretty easily.”

He then provides a few helpful instructions, almost like he’s hoping someone will attempt the deed he’s warning about, saying “All you have to do is look at a map of the grid and figure out where most of the wires go into the substations—that’s a critical substation.”

First off, we didn’t need the Daily Mail or Mr. Wellinghoff to tell us our power grid has been left vulnerable by our traitorous politicians. People like the late Dr. Peter Vincent Pry started sounding alarm bells about this 20 years ago, and Congress has never appropriated the money to harden the grid against an EMP or cyberattack, even though it would cost a fraction of what it costs to wage even one overseas forever war on the scale of Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.

Our politicians are quick to attack other countries, slow to defend our own.

While an attack of this nature could very well be carried out by a foreign power such as China, Russia or Iran, the chances are just as good that our power grid has been designed to be easily taken down, or that the U.S. government itself has aspirations of someday taking it down and blaming it on a foreign government it wants to attack.

BOTTOM LINE: The U.S. power grid is ripe for a false flag attack. This could happen either by leaving it intentionally vulnerable to an attack from a foreign enemy that has already been provoked (like Russia or Iran) or from our own government.

Let’s pay attention and see if similar stories about America’s vulnerable power grid start getting planted in other mainstream news sites, because in today’s carefully cultivated and orchestrated news cycle, everything gets reported for a reason.

More....

Flock's fastest-growing business is 60 mph police drones that can read license plates from the sky

Flock's fastest-growing business is 60 mph police drones that can read license plates from the sky

Rob Thubron

There have been plenty of headlines about Flock's license plate-scanning technology lately, but that's not its only controversial business. The company says its Drone as First Responder, or DFR, tech – which can also read license plates from the air – is its fastest-growing segment. 

Flock is best known for the roadside cameras now operating in more than 6,000 US communities. But the company is increasingly betting on drones that can be dispatched to emergency scenes before police officers arrive.

A Flock spokesperson said the firm has secured more than 200 DFR customers, including police departments and private companies. It's also ramping up production of its US-designed drones, which will be built in Georgia.

In an interview with the All-In podcast, CEO Garrett Langley explained that the drones sit in climate-controlled rooftop docks, usually on police precincts or fire departments. "When a 911 call happens, instead of sending an officer first, you can send a drone," he said.

The aircraft can fly at 400 feet and reach 60 mph, while a 40x optical zoom allows operators to inspect the scene from a distance. Flock says its DFR system arrives in an average of 86 seconds and can resolve 20% of calls without an officer being sent.

Langley described a case in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in which a woman at a gas station called 911 after seeing a man pacing with what she believed was a gun. The drone arrived in under a minute and revealed that the object was a lighter. "Normally what would happen... is like one cop would have heard that, flip on the blue lights, race down there... and someone's about to die. Instead, they launch the drone," Langley said.

Flock presents the incident as an example of how DFR can de-escalate dangerous encounters and prevent unnecessary police deployments. It was previously reported that Dearborn, Michigan, has adopted a similar Skydio system that can reach incidents in around 2.5 minutes.

Like its numberplate-reading tech, the rapid spread of DFR programs is raising concerns. As of February, more than 1,000 public safety agencies had received FAA waivers needed to automate drone operations.

The EFF warns that the aircraft can observe people through windows, in backyards, and on roofs without their knowledge. Flock also added license plate-reading capabilities to its drones last year, effectively creating flying versions of its controversial roadside cameras. The Flock Alpha drone can read license plates from up to 2,000 feet away.

Flock says DFR only activates for calls for service and that every flight is logged, auditable, and displayed through a public-facing transparency dashboard.

Flock's core cameras have produced large numbers of false alerts, while officers have allegedly used its systems to stalk partners and ex-girlfriends. Moving the same surveillance capabilities into the sky will likely amplify calls for more protections and make people even angrier.

Today in Dystopia: Flock Camera Tyranny and Sam Altman Surveillance