The ranchers know their herds have been decimated by drought but they're still exporting beef to beat the band. This is now putting the cost for a pound of beef out of reach of what many Americans can afford.
The solution? I can think of two.
1) Request that these beef industrialists, which is what they actually are, sell their property to American ranchers who will put the American food consumer before the rest of the world. Ditto for the dairy industrialists. Yet somehow I think these Americans will listen as much to this request as the French aristocracy did to food complaints from the rabble.
2) Have Americans start a letter-writing campaign to Apple and Microsoft: "Hi. I can't afford to buy your products because I'm spending so much of my paycheck on beef and dairy items at the grocery store. Have a nice day!"
That might translate into some action somewhere along the line.
But this is one of the downsides of a nation that lives on credit. Cattle ranchers selling the rug out from under their fellow Americans didn't start with the drought; it's been going on for decades, and getting worse every decade. They're been getting away with jacking up domestic prices because they know the American consumer will suck it up, pay the higher food costs, and pay for other purchases on credit. Only this time they've gone over the top on the excuse of drought.
If Americans started paying cash for a few years, they would feel the pain more and this would translate into fairer and more rational business practices -- rational in that it's suicidal to a society to short your countrymen in critical areas in order to turn a bigger profit overseas.
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