HighLine exists to bridge a specific gap. The protein industry is handing the keys from a generation of leaders who built it on cycles, relationships, and reps to a generation that grew up on data. The numbers are sharper than they have ever been. The muscle memory for what to do when the numbers stop making sense is not. We close that gap, week by week, decision by decision.
Michael has spent more than thirty years inside the protein supply chain. Buyer side, seller side, slaughter floor, butcher’s block, aging room, customer table. He has lived through the cycles, run the procurement books, and watched the industry move from relationship-and-rolodex to dashboard-and-data.
He has bought beef when the cutout was running away from the buyer and sold pork when the freezer was running ahead of demand. He has sat with growers when the contract terms broke down and with retailers when the feature ad hit the wrong week. He has walked plants in three regions, watched yields move with the temperature in the cooler, and learned that the difference between a good week and a sideways one is rarely in the dashboard. It is in what you do with what the dashboard tells you.
He started HighLine because the playbook is shifting hands. The leaders who built the modern protein industry are handing the keys to a generation that grew up with more data and fewer reps. The veteran two desks over, the one who used to lean across and tell you what the print actually meant, is gone. HighLine is the read that desk used to give. Every Tuesday morning, before the week gets loud.
Michael joined Damian Mason on The Business of Agriculture to make ten predictions about where US ag is headed through 2026. The ones about beef, China, and consumer behavior already look prescient. The rest, you can decide.
Watch the conversation on YouTubeWhere the protein industry talks to itself, HighLine is in the room. A short list of the associations and forums that keep the read sharp.
Membership in the import-and-export forum that tracks the trade flows we write about every week.
The trade voice of the protein industry in Washington and beyond.
The advisory group connected to the Business of Agriculture network.
HighLine is a protein industry advisory firm. We write the read that helps protein industry leaders act on the data they already have. We are not a broker, not a desk, not a research house with a model in search of a buyer. We are the read the desk next to you used to give, scaled for an industry where that desk is empty more often than not.
HighLine Insights lands in your inbox before the week gets loud. Built for buyers who want the muscle memory of thirty years on the desk next to their data. Subscribe and the next issue is the next one you read.
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