Director Daniel M. Manzanares speaks about the importance of the Santa Teresa International Export/Import Livestock Crossing near Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
U.S., Mexican cattle ranchers turn economic integration into science apart from politics
The Mexican cattle are part of a cross-border breeding experiment that has grown into ‘a model of perfection’ through the latest technology and shared genetics.
SANTA TERESA, N.M. — Just west of El Paso, in an arid stretch of the New Mexico desert, a sea of cattle in a sprawling corral straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. There are no long traffic lines, no signs of a crisis.
Instead, a rusty border fence slices through the middle of the corrals. At precise times of day, usually at dawn, an agent from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrives in a white SUV, steps out and walks toward the 30-foot fence.
The agent carries a priceless item — the key to the gate. Hundreds of Mexican cattle, already checked by U.S. Department of Agriculture and Mexican health inspectors, are met by a lone vaquero. He stands on a sliver of soil between both countries — no man’s land — and with a swinging lasso, herds them across the international line.
The cattle were born in Mexico but fathered with sperm from bulls in New Mexico. Within seconds of trotting onto U.S. soil and over a weight station, the cattle, branded with an “M” for “Mexican,” are sold to U.S. brokers and declared American.
These cattle are part of a cross-border breeding experiment that over the years has grown into “a model of perfection” because of technology and shared genetics, known as AI and ET, which stand for “artificial insemination” and “embryo transfer,” according to cattle ranchers.
“We have perfected the ideal heifer, Angus, you name it,” said cattle rancher Alvaro I. Bustillos, 43, as he watched a new herd barrel through the border. Bustillos is board chairman and president of the Chihuahua Cattlemen’s Association, or Unión Ganadera Regional de Chihuahua, which owns and operates the crossing here and two others along the New Mexico and Texas border.
“Other than the ‘M’ brand,” he said, “there is little that distinguishes them from American cattle. We’re fully integrated with the U.S. cattle industry based on shared genetics. They’re all part of the same family.”
As U.S. and Mexico officials wrangle over complex issues from immigration to fentanyl, cattle ranchers from both countries have found a way to turn economic integration into a science apart from politics. The supply chain begins on the border between San Jeronimo, Mexico, and Santa Teresa, N.M., a town of 6,000 people that sits on the edge of Texas, adjacent to El Paso. For the Mexican cattle, post-insemination, the arduous journey is just beginning.
Daily, trucks filled with cattle leave Santa Teresa for feedlots scattered within a day’s drive to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, California and Colorado.
The vast majority of Bustillos’ cattle, and that of other Mexican cattle ranchers, for example, end up in the Texas Panhandle. They’re eventually slaughtered and packaged for grocery stores and dinner tables throughout the United States and parts of Mexico.
The process is known as “gate to plate,” said David Anderson, professor and livestock expert at Texas A&M.
The cattle carry Texas genes, eat Texas grass and are inspected in Texas, Anderson added.
“But I think a lot of people don’t know that. I would argue that there are restaurants, retail outlets, grocery stores and consumers who would reluctantly buy meat if they knew it came from Mexico, and I think that’s an education thing,” he said.
Feeder cattle from Chihuahua, Mexico cross the border daily to supply the U.S. food chain
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The science behind the cattle
The story of the Mexican cattle starts well before the crossing, and it involves science. The process begins when Mexican ranchers buy bull semen from ranches in the United States, including New Mexico. The Mexican cows, meanwhile, receive a hormone treatment to produce more than one egg at a time.
Bustillos’ men pick up a cooler of sperm straws from the U.S. and drive back to Chihuahua, where they inseminate dozens, if not hundreds, of the Mexican cows with American sperm. A week or so later, a veterinarian recovers the fertilized embryos and transfers them to other cows, which give birth and produce calves with superior genetics.
Annually, about 1 million cattle from Mexico cross into the United States, more than half through the crossing. The Santa Teresa crossing is one of just a handful where cattle are permitted to run across the border, avoiding cattle trailers and long lines.
The crossing is one of the busiest in the country for livestock, with about 70 acres divided between the Mexican and U.S. sides.
On any given day, as many as 10,000 head of cattle wait in corrals. This year, the projected number of cattle is on pace to surpass 700,000, up from 400,000 in 2021, a drought year that contributed to higher meat prices because of short supply.
Because the product is a live animal, toxic politics are kept to a minimum. Barring a trade dispute, the cattle flow seamlessly without tariffs or quotas.
“The border is defined by time and politics,” said Daniel Manzanares, director of the crossing. “But look around you. There are no traffic lines. Everything is designed to work orderly. When the U.S. Customs opens that gate in the morning, there are no people crossing, just cattle. We coordinate with both governments and follow the rules. We are completely fenced in.”
Manzanares said the system works because of communication and trust between the cattlemen and both governments.
“That’s a valuable lesson for all of us on the border,” he said. “When you work together toward a mutual goal that makes economic sense and meets consumer demands, then good things happen.”
By working together, both sides have learned to maximize profits by keeping operational costs down.
In this business, profits depend heavily on the weight of the steer. Mexican cattle arrive in the stockyards of Santa Teresa, weighing 300 to 500 pounds. The goal is to fatten them in feedlots to 1,200 to 1,400 pounds before sending them to the slaughterhouse.
Most cross-border operations, such as with cars, involve the assembly of things. For example, workers in Guanajuato, North Texas and Michigan might all piece together the same minivan. With cattle, the process is reversed.
“We don’t keep the product together,” said Ben Weinheimer, president and CEO of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association. “We [U.S. consumers] disassemble it, every bit of it, bite by bite.”
Parts of a cow, like tongue, head, tail and bone marrow, known as Tuétano, go back to Mexico, where some consumers and chefs like Juan Ramón Cárdenas consider them a delicacy.
Cardenas is the chef and owner of a Fort Worth restaurant called Don Artemio, as well as an upscale restaurant in Saltillo, Mexico.
“Those are some of the favorite parts of a cow,” he said, adding that he and other food businesses depend on cattle exports from the U.S. because “of their excellent quality, second to none.”
Watch: Panhandle feed lots beef up Mexican feeder cattle to fulfill supply shortages
Texas Cattle Feeders Association President and CEO Ben Weinheimer and others speak to the importance of Mexican feeder cattle in the supply chain.
Rancher disparities
One major reason for the partnership between Mexicans and Texas cattle ranchers has to do with narrowing the gap of disparities between both sides.
For instance, Mexican cattle ranchers, unlike their American counterpart farmers, do not have the infrastructure or financial resources necessary to fatten their herds, Bustillos said.
For a small Mexican cattle rancher, reaching that ideal cattle weight of more than 1,200 pounds requires deep pockets to support the herd for more than a year until slaughter.
That means purchasing lots of corn, wheat and alfalfa and borrowing from banks. In Mexico, a rancher pays interest rates of 25% or more, compared to about 8.5% for a U.S. rancher.
“It all comes down to economies of scale,” explained Bustillos, noting that his state of Chihuahua has more than 70,000 cattle ranchers, the majority of them on small ranches, generating hundreds of jobs.
“Mexican cattle make up 3 to 5% of the overall cattle market in the United States, but that small percentage represents lots of jobs in Mexico,” he said. “By working together, we can be more economically efficient, understand each other’s needs and work toward solving problems,” including labor shortages that plague the Texas Panhandle, where his cattle end up.
Mexican feeder cattle are raised in Texas panhandle feeder lots along with U.S. born ones
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The smell of cow poop
Amarillo is some seven hours northeast of Santa Teresa. The two regions complement each other in big and small ways. They even smell alike. The smell of fecal dust — cow poop — is unmistakable, as is the cowboy culture and wide-open spaces.
There’s potential for the region of southern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle to share more than cattle.
Back in the 1980s, Charlie Crowder, a businessman with a vision of building a binational community, bought land in what is now Santa Teresa. His vision of the community would straddle the border, complete with factories and modern housing for workers to commute across borders. Crowder’s vision remains far from being fulfilled, especially in a polarized time in the U.S.
To the far east is Amarillo, with a population of more than 200,000, the city, the second-largest in the Texas Panhandle after Lubbock. Amarillo means “yellow” in Spanish, and some affectionately call it the Yellow Rose of Texas.
The Amarillo region is dotted with grasslands and grain elevators, mills, slaughterhouses and feed-manufacturing centers. Tiny towns line the area with names like Hereford, Bovina and Dalhart. It is home to the Big Texan Steak Ranch’s 72-ounce steak challenge, where if a customer eats a 4.5-pound sirloin in an hour, they get their money back.
Since the founding of the railroads, freight service catapulted the area as a cattle shipping region. The meat packing industry is one of the biggest employers in Amarillo. About one-quarter of the U.S. beef supply is processed in the area.
“As we develop better genetics here in the United States, Mexican ranchers are sending us a higher quality feeder animal that we care for and feed just like we do domestic U.S. origin cattle, said Weinheimer of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, which is headquartered in Amarillo. “It works for both sides.”
Over the years, Weinheimer added, data analysis has helped in improving genetics. As have improving food rations and nutrition management.
At a feedlot near Texline, in the far northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle, Michael Bezner, looks around his farm cattle operation with some 20,000 head of cattle roaming the area. The farm cattle are complete with grain mills, which use six semi-loads per day of just corn.
Bezner, past chairman of the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, is the owner and manager of Bezner Beef. The goal here is to fatten cattle 3 pounds per day until they reach 1,200 to 1,400. Corn is key: Not only does corn provide cattle with a good balance of proteins and carbohydrates, but its high levels of essential fatty acids make it a great choice for cattle to maintain their health.
The mills produce many more feed rations by mixing corn with hay and other ingredients, including vitamins and minerals to produce customized feed rations for cattle best suited for cattle as they grow.
“We’re constantly evaluating through data information to know what adjustments are needed to improve genetics,” Bezner said. “In the end the consumer is rewarding the cattle producers for producing a higher quality, better tasting, more tender, higher marbled product.”
Labor shortage
As the debate over immigration intensifies in rhetoric, one issue too often overlooked is the growing labor shortage in Texas and throughout the country. The labor shortage is having an impact on the cattle industry and other food manufacturing industries in the Texas Panhandle.
That’s evident in the town of Dalhart, some 85 miles north of Amarillo. Dalhart’s population is an estimated 8,000, about half of them Hispanic. They make up a majority of the region’s employees, whether at the local steakhouse or feedlots.
Consider Gene Lowrey, general manager of XIT Feeders, a cattle operation with a focus on sustainability. The feedyard is part of the Five Rivers Cattle Feeding organization, the business Lowrey has been a part of for 30 years.
These days, he worries about the future of the cattle and food industry, explaining that “some jobs here are not blessed with a bunch of people who want to move to the Texas Panhandle. These jobs are hard, not very fun at all.”
Lowrey is referring to tough jobs like pen riders, who look after a large herd of cattle, as well as those who clean water tanks or repair and maintain facilities in a region known for extreme weather conditions.
Demand for farm labor is evident through a sevenfold increase of H-2A positions requested and approved over the last 17 years. Texas employs the second-most seasonal agricultural workers, behind only New York.
As the food and agricultural supply chains between the U.S. and Mexico become increasingly integrated and interdependent — in the case of cattle via technology and genetics — cross-border movement of workers between the two countries is essential to both food systems, Lowrey and others say.
“Technology, genetics are great, but you also need people. So those immigration programs are extremely important,” he said, referring to H-2A programs for temporary Mexican guest workers.
Bustillos said people divided by borders can learn much from such a collaboration over cattle. “By cooperating with one another, openly and candidly, we can also work toward solving other problems like migration,” he said. “You have problems, we have solutions and vice-versa. That’s what good neighbors are for.”
At José on Lovers Lane in Dallas, the menu includes tacos al carbon and carne asada.
Executive Chef Anastacia Quinoñes, known worldwide for preparing Mexican regional dishes, said she takes great pride in bringing the best of Mexico to José's clients.
“We don’t know if the steak comes from a Mexican or a Texas cattle,” she said. “But I assure you that the meat is of the highest quality.”
Jose chef Anastacia Quinoñes Pittman prepares carne asada from Texas panhandle beef
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