Strategy — Agriculture

Family farms are worth preserving, too.

Omega's agriculture strategy preserves family farms and the processing and supply around them — vertically integrated, and built to last across generations.

Cattle on open range — the American West.

Why preservation

This isn’t a slow drift. It’s approaching crisis.

The U.S. cattle herd just fell to its lowest level in 75 years. To keep beef on the shelf, America now imports roughly 17% of it — an all-time high, and about double the share of just a few years ago. Here is where that beef comes from.

Where America’s imported beef comes from (2025)

Australia23.6%Brazil19.5%Canada18.2%Mexico12.3%New Zealand10.8%Uruguay6.8%

And the countries we depend on keep far more cattle than we do, relative to their people:

CountryCattlePeoplePer person
United States86M342M0.25
Australia30M27M1.1
Brazil234M212M1.1
Argentina51M46M1.1

Every country we lean on for beef keeps roughly one cow for every person. The United States keeps about one for every four. Brazil’s herd is nearly three times the size of ours; Australia, our single largest supplier, runs almost a cow per citizen; and even Argentina — a fraction of our size — keeps a cow for every person.

The farms and ranches we lose don’t come back.

See the fuller picture: the American farm in numbers →

Sources: USDA NASS Cattle Inventory (Jan. 2026) & Foreign Agricultural Service; USDA / WASDE import data; Australian Bureau of Statistics (2025); IBGE Brazil; Argentine Ministry of Agriculture (2025); national census populations. Figures approximate.

The thesis

Vertically integrated agricultural preservation: a processing anchor, an owned and allied supply chain, and a hedging discipline that steadies the whole — so the families who farm the land can keep doing it.

The thesis came from a hard truth: on their own, many of these farms, ranches, and equestrian operations can’t stand. We studied the economics — and found that land value and business operations are constantly at odds. So we analyze standalone properties and integrate them, pairing the land with the processing, supply, and discipline that let it pay its own way. It took institutional rigor to prove out — but integration may be the very thing that preserves the farm.

Preservation, held for generations.

The playbook

One repeatable structure.

The same shape, applied with discipline across every agricultural sub-area.

01

Processing anchor

An established, profitable processor sits at the center — the demand that everything else feeds. When the ranches have a dependable buyer down the road, the whole chain stops living season to season.

02

Owned & allied supply

Owned operations and long-horizon alliances with family farms supply the anchor directly. Families keep farming their own land, with a fair and steady market for what they raise.

03

Hedging overlay

Commodity discipline steadies the whole, so volatility never forces a short-term decision. A bad price year should be a hard year — not the year the farm is sold.

Where we build

Areas of focus.

Processing & supply

Established processors and the owned supply that feeds them — keeping the value of what is raised close to home.

Family-farm alliances

Long-horizon partnerships that give farms real, lasting value — fair pricing, shared services, and a path for the next generation.

Commodity hedging

A disciplined overlay that steadies income across cycles, so one bad season doesn’t undo three good ones.

Animal health & services

The shared services that keep operations sound and supported — veterinary care, nutrition, genetics, and the people who know the herd.

For the family weighing what comes next.

A farm is a lifetime of work. Whether you want to stay on and keep building or step back, what matters is who carries it forward — and that it stays whole.

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