Growing up on his family’s ranch outside Pueblo, CO, taught Dave Weaber that success in the cattle business is measured over generations, not just market cycles.
That philosophy has followed him through a career spanning nearly every link of the beef supply chain. It continues to shape the advice he offers producers today as senior animal protein analyst at Terrain, an offering of participating Farm Credit associations. While many analysts focus on tomorrow’s market movement, Dave spends much of his time looking five, 10 and even 20 years ahead, helping producers understand how economics, consumer behavior and demographic shifts will shape the future of beef.
Dave grew up on his family’s diversified operation where cattle were only one part of the business. The ranch ran commercial cows, raised seedstock and show heifers, grazed sheep and, at one time, farmed several thousand acres of dryland wheat. Like many operations, diversification wasn’t a business strategy; it was simply how ranch families survived.
He showed cattle through 4-H, judged livestock, dairy cattle and wool, and credits those experiences with teaching him public speaking, critical thinking and leadership long before he realized their value.
One opportunity proved especially influential. While in high school, he and his twin brother, Bob, worked at a neighboring dairy, where they learned artificial insemination, pregnancy checking, feed mixing and nearly every aspect of dairy management. Those skills later benefited their family’s cattle operation while exposing Dave to a broader view of animal agriculture.
After high school, Dave earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in animal science at Colorado State University, with a focus on ruminant nutrition. Dave pursued market analysis, while Bob pursued beef genetics and is currently a professor and head of the Eastern Kansas Research-Extension Centers at Kansas State University.
Learning every link of the chain
Dave chose to learn the entire beef supply chain by intentionally working throughout all its segments.
He began at CattleFax, analyzing cattle markets and helping develop feedyard benchmarking systems. Curious about how packers operated, Dave moved to Swift & Co. in Greeley, CO, where he learned the economics of meat processing from the inside.
From there, he spent nearly a decade helping Delhaize America redesign procurement strategies for thousands of grocery stores stretching from Maine to Florida. Later, Dave joined Express Markets before joining Terrain in 2022.
“I wanted to understand the entire supply chain,” Dave told WLJ, noting that understanding producers alone isn’t enough to understand why cattle markets behave as they do.
Today, that broad perspective allows him to connect ranch-level decisions with consumer purchasing habits, grocery merchandising and global trade.
Herd expansion and calf prices
Few questions dominate producer conversations today more than when the cow herd will finally begin to expand, and Dave believes the answer is more complicated than record calf prices.
Dave said producers are enjoying strong revenues, but many operations remain what he describes as “equity rich and cash poor.” Years of drought, rising interest rates and deferred maintenance have left many ranches reluctant to make major investments despite unprecedented cattle prices.
“I think a lot of that is the story of why we haven’t seen expansion yet,” Dave said. “There’s a lot of folks, when you look back at the last couple of years … it’s just shocking to the system how valuable these cattle are. Similarly, how big the net margin can be.”
Even with those profits, however, he noted that many cow-calf operations still lack the working capital needed to confidently grow their businesses. His advice is straightforward: build working capital before building cow numbers.
Rather than chasing expansion simply because prices are attractive, Dave encourages producers to strengthen balance sheets, reduce debt and prepare for the inevitable downturn that accompanies every cattle cycle.
“Our job is really to work in the two-, five- and 10-year horizon to help customers get in position,” Dave said. “Maybe it’s not the time to build. Maybe it’s the time to cash the checks and build reserves, so when cows get cheap again, then you go out and do it. The guy that keeps his powder dry is the one that has a better chance of winning the battle long term.”
Dave noted that drought also remains the industry’s biggest limiting factor.
“I’ve got one slide,” Dave said, describing the presentations he gives to ranchers “It’s the drought monitor, and I think it’s the thing holding us back. It’s not tariffs. It’s not interest rates. Those all play a role, but if you don’t have grass, none of the rest of it matters.”
Dave continued that without adequate forage, attractive markets mean little, and until grazing conditions improve across much of cattle country, many producers will continue to market heifers rather than retain them.
Consumers reward quality
Dave noted that one of the more surprising developments in today’s cattle market has been consumers’ willingness to continue paying record prices for beef. He spent years analyzing wholesale beef demand by quality grade, and the data consistently point to one conclusion: consumers continue rewarding quality.
“It’s just absolutely incredible how good beef demand is,” Dave said. “If you had to pick what growing demand looked like, this is it.”
His analysis shows spending on Prime beef has climbed more than 20% annually on an inflation-adjusted basis over the past three years, while branded Choice products and ground beef have also continued posting impressive gains. Rather than trading down to pork or chicken, consumers have largely remained loyal to beef.
Dave believes that loyalty didn’t happen by accident. It is the result of decades of work by seedstock producers, commercial cattlemen, feeders and packers to improve eating quality.
“When you go back to the early ’90s, half of our product was Select, and two out of five Choice steaks were tough,” Dave said. “We had to go back to the seedstock level and essentially make different selection decisions to figure out how to make our product better.”
Dave continued that those decisions are paying off today through the adoption of better genetics, improvements in marbling and the growth of branded beef programs that have transformed the product consumers find in grocery stores and restaurants.
“We’ve got enough technology and quality in our cattle that we’re raising that we can command a better price,” he said. “Fortunately, we’ve got a product consumers love, so there’s some opportunity for growth.”
Future success, Dave believes, won’t simply come from producing more. It will come from understanding where demand is growing, competing more effectively in export markets and positioning operations to remain financially resilient regardless of market cycles.
Investing in next generation
For Dave, planning for the future extends well beyond balance sheets and succession plans. He believes one of agriculture’s greatest investments is in the people who will eventually lead it.
Looking back on his own career, he is quick to credit the ranchers, professors, 4-H leaders and livestock judging coaches who took time to teach and encourage him along the way.
“I got all the mentoring that went into my career,” Dave said. “I owe them a lot.”
Today, he sees that same responsibility falling to his generation. Whether it’s helping a young producer think through business decisions, connecting someone with a job opportunity or simply sharing lessons learned over coffee in a farm shop, those relationships are every bit as important as market outlooks.
“That whole mentorship thing is probably one of the unsung heroes of agriculture,” Dave said. “If you look at just about any operation, there’s been somebody somewhere along the line that came alongside that operation and said, ‘I see you struggling. This might help, and I’m here to help you.’”
For Dave, that’s every bit as important to the industry’s future as rebuilding the cow herd. Strong cattle markets may come and go, but passing knowledge from one generation to the next remains one of agriculture’s greatest strengths. — Charles Wallace, WLJ contributing editor
