CHARLOTTSVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Summer grilling season is in full swing upon passing through the Friday night summer solstice, and some people are heating up about beef prices as they look at what to put over the fire. Lean ground beef is running around 8.49-a-pound, and a USDA choice sirloin in the Charlottsville area regular price will run around 11.49-a-pound right now. The Virginia Farm Bureau says it’s simple economics, low supply and large demand. Beef demand in Virginia is 59.1-pounds-per-person in 2025, up from 58.9 in 2024, and the 2025 U.S. beef cattle herd is the lowest on record. Right now, beef prices are some 41% higher than they were this time last year.

The Virginia Cattlemen’s Association says herd numbers anyway run in 10-to-12-year cycles of expansion and contraction. But compounding the issue in 2025 was drought in 2021 and 2022 in top cattle-raising states prompted producers to begin culling their herds. When drought makes it so cattle can’t adequately graze, farmers have to buy feed of which the increase demand drives those costs even higher. So cattle ranchers were culling those herds in those years which has resonated to today’s low.

Virginia Tech Agribusiness Professor Mario Ortez tells VFB we’re likely bottomed out right now, and herds and prices should begin recovering next year. He says it’s a matter of producers no longer culling herds, especially heifers. But even then, “Once you make that decision to retain that heifer, then it takes about 2 years for that heifer to bear offspring, then it’s another 18-months to 24-months for that offspring to have offspring and be ready to be harvested,” Ortez said.

If you’re looking for something less expensive to put on the grill, look at poultry. Poultry prices are only a shade up over this time last year. Pork is only slightly better than beef right now with hog prices up 23% over the beginning of summer 2024. Click here for that commodities table.