Joseph Ring of Ring Brothers Beef; audio quality, Jason Mauck's Field Day and raising cattle

About this episode

Joseph Ring, co-owner of Ring Brothers Beef and an Illinois indoor cattle feedlot operation, joins Vance to unpack how he and his brother pivoted during COVID-19 to sell direct-to-consumer beef when grocery shelves emptied, learning the value of dry-aging and butchering their own hogs with neighbors when processing plants shut down. The conversation covers the mechanics of custom cattle feeding (backgrounding, ration energy density, live-weight bidding over their own scale), the extreme concentration of US beef packing (four processors handling 80% of volume) and its effect on commodity pricing volatility, and a detour into feedback culture: Ring's blunt, "disagreeable" personality helped Vance dramatically improve his podcast's audio quality early on. They swap notes on the Big Five personality test (Understanding Myself), attending farmer/inventor Jason Mauck's experimental field day alongside "oddball" regenerative-ag tinkerers, and wrap up discussing the Articulate Ventures book club (Thomas Jefferson Bible, Dante's Inferno, 1984) as the network opens to public membership.

“A lot about aging. That's probably the thing we've talked about the most... it'll hang in a hole or well half or quarter carcass for 14 to 17 days... that just breaks down the connective tissue... it's just a lot better eating experience when you dry age it for a certain period of time.”

“80% of the meat is processed by... four different processors right now... very few of the cattle in the US, less than 20%, are sold on this cash basis. A lot of 'em are just formula or grid where they have a contract with the large packer.”

“If you find somebody that is willing to criticize you, that's a person you probably wanna pay attention to... if you only go around finding people that will tell you good things about yourself, you're probably not being around people that'll help you get better.”

Key moments

• Vance describes being "red pilled" at Jason Mauck's field day by regenerative-ag tinkerers who weren't selling anything, contrasting them with typical corporate/marketing-driven sustainability messaging (bubbles, institutions).
• [8/10] Ring recounts critiquing Vance's early podcast audio quality unprompted, and Vance reflects that people willing to criticize you honestly are the ones worth keeping close — quoting Jordan Peterson on love/hate as the only sources of truth about yourself. Timestamp ~00:19:37–00:22:39.
• Ring and Vance compare Big Five "disagreeableness" scores from the Understanding Myself (Jordan Peterson) personality test, with Vance revealing he scored a "1" (near-maximally disagreeable) on a 0-100 scale.
• Ring explains the mechanics of custom cattle feeding: backgrounders, ration energy ramp-up (52 to 63 megacalories/hundredweight), and grass-to-grain transition physiology.
• [7/10] Ring details COVID-era cattle price volatility — losing 12 cents/lb in a week, worth $300-400/head — and explains the Holcomb, Kansas packing-plant fire's precedent effect on the market. Timestamp ~00:46:36–00:49:16.
• Ring states 80% of US beef is processed by four packers and less than 20% of cattle are sold on a cash basis rather than contract/formula pricing (institutions).
• The conversation shifts to the Articulate Ventures book club (Dante's Inferno, Jekyll and Hyde, Naked Sun, 1984), with Vance describing the group's practice of choosing "Lindy" books that have stood the test of time and noting the network is opening to public membership.

Notable quotes

“If you find somebody that is willing to criticize you, that's a person you probably wanna pay attention to... who is this character that took a chance on me being pissed at them to tell me something that I needed to know?”

“80% of the meat is processed by... four different processors right now... less than 20% are sold on this cash basis.”

“We lost 12 cents in a week. And on a 14, 1500 pound calf, that's... three, four hundred bucks a head.”

“It'll hang in a hole or well half or quarter carcass for 14 to 17 days... it's just a lot better eating experience when you dry age it.”

Predictions made in this episode

• Direct-to-consumer beef sales and local/custom processing will keep growing, but local butcher/processing capacity will remain a persistent bottleneck limiting how much this model can scale.
• Cattle/beef commodity pricing will remain highly volatile for a long time due to continued packer consolidation and susceptibility to black-swan disruptions (plant fires, pandemics).