Trump Administration Unleashes America’s Cattle Power
The initiative is part of a coordinated effort between the USDA, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stabilize the national beef supply and address herd losses from drought and escalating costs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under Secretary Brooke Rollins has just announced a new initiative that can best be described as “Unleashing American Cattle Power”.
The agency has put forth a new rancher support plan aimed at boosting the American beef industry by opening more public lands to grazing and cutting regulatory barriers to ranching and beef processing. The initiative, supported by the Trump administration, is part of a coordinated effort between the USDA, the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stabilize the national beef supply.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my report on the nation’s herd levels, which were the lowest recorded in over 70 years. The goal of the Trump administration is to build up the animal inventory and help farmers reduce ranching costs.
“America’s food supply chain is a national security priority for the Trump Administration,” Rollins said. “We are committed to ensuring the American people have an affordable source of protein and that America’s ranchers have a strong economic environment where they can continue to operate for generations to come.”
To protect the livestock industry and incentivize expansion, Rollins said USDA would “immediately expedite deregulatory reforms, boost processing capacity, including getting more locally raised beef into schools, and working across the government to fix longstanding common-sense barriers for ranchers like outdated grazing restrictions.”
According to Rollins, the U.S. has lost over 17% of cattle ranches and more than 150,000 operations since 2017, pushing the national herd to a 75-year low, while consumer demand for beef has grown approximately 9% over the past decade.
Because increasing the size of the domestic herd takes time, Rollins said USDA would make investments to reduce market volatility over the long term for producers and consumers.
NEW: @USDA is announcing a plan to boost American ranchers by opening up public lands to grazing…
ROLLINS: At USDA we are protecting our beef industry and incentivizing new ranchers to take up the noble vocation of ranching…"
— Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) October 22, 2025
The USDA issued a 13-page white paper with its agenda to support American cattle ranches. The plan directs the Forest Service and BLM to reopen millions of currently unused acres for grazing, streamline environmental reviews, and simplify permit renewals.
It also establishes a joint USDA–DOI initiative to make grazing a top federal priority, giving ranchers a stronger voice in land management decisions and speeding up access to public rangelands. The effort aims to reverse decades of herd decline and create new opportunities for young and veteran ranchers.
The plan also removes or scales back several environmental regulations seen as obstacles to ranching and processing. Legal Insurrection readers may recall my report on the EPA attempting to target our meat industry with ponderous new rules related to clean water standards. Those requirements have now been culled from the herd.
i. EPA Action: The EPA is promoting regulatory certainty and clarity for America’s ranchers by ensuring a clear, consistent, and durable definition of “Waters for the United States” (WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act. In addition to that action, the EPA has withdrawn a 2024 proposed rule that would have imposed costly new wastewater discharge requirements for meat and poultry processing facilities.
ii. Implementation: EPA has already taken action on the WOTUS definition and has withdrawn the Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards (ELG) rule.
iii. Results: This action will prevent $1.1 B to $7.8 B in future compliance costs, allowing more meat and poultry processing facilities to be built in America.
There are many other elements to this plan, including how to better address challenges faced by ranchers from wolves and other predators, and how to reduce burdensome fees.
I recently noted that the Health and Human Services plans to revisit recommendations related to saturated fatty acids, which are found in meat and dairy products. This agency is also part of the initiative.
The Small Business Administration and Health and Human Services are also part of the initiative, focusing on financial assistance for family ranches and promoting beef as part of a nutrient-dense American diet.
Officials said the suite of actions is designed to “fortify domestic beef production,” making markets less volatile for ranchers and more affordable for consumers while strengthening the nation’s food security.
I am grateful, as a steak-love and butter-user…and as an American who appreciates food security.
I, for one, am delighted to see the Trump Administration taking American food security seriously. https://t.co/RRIEF5aEgZ
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) October 22, 2025
I wonder how triggered the climate cultists and vegans are going to be by this news?
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Comments
Oh no! The methane! Think of the poor polar bears!
Eat mor chikn
I did, but I think beef tastes better than polar bear
Leave the wild horses and donkeys alone
The BLM amd ranchers are destroying their ranges, penning them into horrible
Conditions, separating entire families
It’s pretty outrageous
We must protect their right to exist.
All wild things need us to step up or we shall all perish and leave the earth to rats and pigeons
Why? What is the point of feral horses and donkeys? There are plenty of horses and donkeys that are owned and productive; who needs the feral ones? What good to they do anyone?
What’s the purpose is our very soul, the meaning of life and purpose
Mare we to destroy all of the free and wild to live and die in cages, lose our open spaces that we share with the animals who God has made us protectors of?
Maybe you need to read and watch the Jane Goodall books and movies
Maybe you need to go to an animal rescue to see what we have done to Theis magical world.
That is pagan bullshit. God created the world for one purpose only: for humans to use for our own benefit. He did not make us “protectors” of the animals, He made us their owners, and commanded us to put the world to the best use we can find for it. There are some areas that are so useless, or so pretty, that the best use we can find for them is to leave them alone and enjoy looking at them. The moment we find a better use for such an area we should take advantage of it.
I’m hoping this is snark because I live in the middle of wild horse country and nothing you just said is happening anywhere I travel across this range.
Wild horses are singularly destructive of springs and water improvements. They seem to have a perverse desire to beat down fences that protect riparian areas walking right past water from those areas piped to troughs for both cattle and wildlife. Then they trample and trample and trample until the spring is nearly unusable.
They are beautiful and devious and, in my unscientific opinion, a pox upon high desert ranges when left to their own devices – which is what happens much more often than not.
No it’s not a snark
Their not wanting to be fenched in is a testament to their need to be free
Maybe you should lok into organizations such as Return to Freedom
Your views are limited.
Yes we need to share, yes there are some problems, but who made them and what can be done about them
I live smack in the middle of wild burro territory. There is no shortage of them. Each jenny breeds once a year, like clockwork.
Over the past 25 years, DW and I adopted a female and a gelding. The jenny escaped the fence twice since we adopted her, and brought home two “surprises” in two years. Now we’re faced with the task of re-homing the mom and keeping the girls, who were born on the grounds, never knew the wild life, and have no inclination to return to it.
In my district, the Appropiate Management Level for wild burros is roughly 200. The current population well exceeds 1,200.
The problem of wild burros was exacerbated in 1971 by the passage of The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, spearheaded by a female activist. The bill was excruciatingly specific about what could NOT be done to pare own the numbers of wild horses and burros, but totally lacking in viable solutions for their population problem, which thereupon got much worse.
There is a reasonable market for wild mustangs. Wild burros, however, have very little economic appeal to potential new homes, and can live up to 50 years in captivity (government or otherwise).
There is population control measures that have and can be done.
I volunteer at a wild life rescue and a horse and donkey rescue is next doors
People breeds these animals and then literal abandon them
.
Wild horses and donkeys are not native to the lands and should be culled due to the extensive damage they cause.
They don’t have a natural range b/c both species are transplants to North America. That said they are picturesque but like any feral species or truly wild species they gotta be managed to keep their population within what the land can support.
They were natural until man hunted them out. When the Spanish first brought them “back” to America the spiritual connection between them and the first peoples was undeniable.
A return to home
The ‘first people’ slaughtered ALL the megafauna in the Americas.
They have no ‘spiritual’ connection to their victims. Believing so is foolish.
Europeans taught the ‘natives’ everything they know about horses, burros and most animal husbandry because they didn’t have it. At all.
That is utter pagan bullshit.
tHERE ARE NO ‘WILD’ HORSES IN THE us
What in the world are you talking about?
I think it’s a great moove.
I have a third interest in a Angus steer that is about 700 pounds, Half way there. My nephew has a farm. They routinely give me a dozen eggs. For the cow it is a $30 bag of fortified feed every 6 weeks and the pasture. Nephew insists that it will work out to $3.25 to $3.5o a pound processed when we go to slaughter. I need a deep freezer.
I have read more than a few stories regarding the aging population of farmers and ranchers with fewer young people to replace them, but I have heard few stories of how they are planning to replace older veterinarians who are leaving the profession and there aren’t enough younger vets who want to work around livestock.. More stock will require more in the field vets.
As for the former, some hope is still left. (Scroll through the photo set.)
Try buying land
But won’t that mean more cows farting on the WEF and Bill Gates?
Good news.
I decided to learn how to get by with less expensive cuts like chuck roast, steaked out.
Pretty good at it, BUT…
No match for a rib steak.
Can’t afford ribeye, so short ribs it is. But sometimes, just occasionally, got to get a brisket
The headline makes it sound like we’re gonna cars on cow farts
My mind went to cows on treadmills producing electricity.
This story was released by the WH to tamp down the furor beginning over the Administrations plan to increase Argentinian beef imports. It rightly points out the decrease in our nations beef supply and the action will help grow our domestic herds while filling in the gap with imported beef to help lower the costs to consumers.
Quite seriously, THIS is what I voted for. Not increases in cattle herds specifically, of course, but the attitude “the people” are more important than some esoteric hypothetical future problem. I should also add that when I say “the people” I mean the citizens of the United States.
We have an active attempt to reduce the illegal population, and an active attempt to reduce crime, an active attempt to reduce energy costs, and an active attempt bring jobs back to the United States and an active attempt to reduce the size of the governmenr.. Now an active attempt to reduce food prices. Trying to stop the war in the Ukraine, and taming Iran are just bonuses.
I hope enough of the voting public recognizes what is being done for them that the Republicans prevail in the mid-term elections.
a few cow farts into the face of the greta thunbergers out there is a good start
The Obama administration practically declared war on ranchers who had raised cattle inside government lands for up to a century, improving springs, protecting waterway riparian buffers, only to have their grazing allotments set to a microscopic number compared to the rent they were paying for the ground use. That freed up the land to be used for pet projects run by paid political contributors instead of those icky Republican ranchers.
It will obviously take a couple years to meaningfully increase capacity. Invetro makes this a shorter curve.
Once upon a time, bull dairy calves were throw -away.
Basically 5 corporations control the beef industry and they do so by limiting slaughter houses and beef aging and processing plants via buying off lefties with propaganda and paying off politicians. This is something the DOA can and should address.