well, it'll have to come around at some point for the cow/calf producer, since there is a good portion of the beef sold that does come from smaller ranches, and if they can't stay in business, and all their broodcows are sold as hamburger, sooner or later there will be a lot fewer cows having calves.. it may not happen next year, but maybe in 5 years you'll see the effect of it
when we bought our herd we bought bred heifers for $1000 each, calves for about 1.40/lb.. those were good times (not for us to be buying of course), but since costs have probably doubled since 1990, and prices have halved, there's just a limit to how much a smaller guy can sharpen his pencil.
around our place we've always insisted on having as big a variety of crops as we can handle, it's pretty rare that the price of everything crashes beyond what you can make a buck at, but if you grow some grain, some cows, etc, you will be padding yourself. you may never make much money as the example of grain and beef are things who's prices are always at odds with each other, but with the cows on the land you can grow the grain with less inputs, you can finish your own beef if you want to.
I sure hope prices come back to about 1.10 for next year, but I think .90 is more like what it will be