“So if the farmers are getting less, that means the middlemen and retailers are charging more. In other words, price gouging.”
Or the supply bottleneck is beyond the farmer and the store price matches demand.
Say farmers have 1000 cows for sale on the market but the processors can only handle 800. The market price paid to the farmers goes down until there are only 800 cows for sale.
Then say for $3/lb on store shelves, the demand would be 1000 cows. But there are only 800 available so the store price goes up until the demand equals 800.
Yes, when you hold a commodity with high demand and low supply you can profit (price gouging). But the higher the profit, the more likely other producers will get into the market and bring the price down.
(And yes, I know the market isn’t perfect and gets distorted due to crony capitalism. Especially with big business like factory farms.)
IN the longer term, processors will expand