Raising Cattle & Making Deals in Arizona | Ashlee Mortimer from Arizona Cattle Growers

About this episode

Ashlee Mortimer, a communications representative for the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association and rancher from Yavapai County, joins Vance to unpack the widening gap between retail beef prices and rancher payouts during the pandemic — grocery prices up 16% week-over-week while cattle producers saw a 30% price drop, a disconnect she attributes to the concentration of 85% of U.S. cattle processing in just four major packing facilities that leaves ranchers with no real pricing leverage. The conversation opens by recounting the creative barter deal that got Vance booked as a speaker (beef instead of cash, since beef was suddenly hard to get), which becomes a recurring theme of collaborative, unconventional problem-solving that Ashlee credits to her agricultural upbringing and her resistance to being told "no." She and Vance trade views on pandemic freedom and mandates: both express discomfort with mask mandates and the broader risk of "the new normal" becoming permanent (Vance raises a hypothetical "mask season" for flu), and both flag the troubling social dynamic of neighbors reporting on neighbors for gathering outdoors, framing it as fear replacing community trust. Ashlee is unambiguously supportive of Trump's executive order keeping meat plants open despite COVID outbreaks among workers, agreeing that PPE and screening — not shutdowns — are the right tradeoff to keep food production running. She pushes back on vegan-diet substitution arguments by noting the caloric and infrastructure gap plant-based alternatives would need to fill. Personal disclosures are light (dry shampoo unavailability from a closed Ulta is her only pandemic-shopping change), and she closes with a specific two-week prediction citing a Facebook statistic (40% unchanged behavior, 20% locked down but eager to reopen, 20% staying scared) and predicts a broad return to normal social/economic activity, which Vance partially agrees with while adding his own forecast of increased armed protest activity in states maintaining stricter lockdowns.

Key moments

• **[00:04:24]** Ashlee cites specific sourced statistics on the retail-vs-rancher price gap, calling the disconnect a pandemic "silver lining" for public awareness of an unfair market structure.
• **[00:05:43]** Explanation of how four major packing facilities processing 85% of U.S. cattle effectively set prices ranchers must accept.
• **[00:30:17]** Ashlee articulates her personal-freedom position on mask mandates, framing it as an individual choice question rather than a public health mandate.
• **[00:33:07]** Discussion of neighbors reporting on neighbors for outdoor gatherings during lockdown, both agreeing it reflects a corrosive "culture of fear."
• **[00:36:00]** Ashlee expresses support for Trump's order keeping meat plants open despite infection risk, favoring PPE/screening over shutdowns.
• **[00:40:19]** Ashlee's specific two-week prediction, cited from a Facebook statistic breakdown of population behavior segments.

Notable quotes

“Processors were selling beef to the grocery stores for $4.49 a pound — 16% higher than Friday. And ranchers that same day were receiving 95 cents a pound — a 30% decrease from a few months ago.”

“85% of the cattle raised in this country are taken to four major meat packing facilities... when four people can tell ranchers 'we're not gonna pay more than this,' ranchers don't have anywhere else to take that beef.”

“I don't wanna live in a society where we have like mask season.”