Agricultural News
Even With Growing Meat Supplies- Demand Has Stayed Strong as a New Decade Arrives
Tue, 21 Jan 2020 06:10:17 CST
Dr. John Anderson, is the new head of the Ag Economics Department at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville- starting in that role at the beginning of 2020. Anderson was on staff of the American Farm Bureau as their Deputy Chief Economist and returned to the American Farm Bureau convention this week in Austin, Texas, offering some market outlook to convention-goers.
Anderson talked about rising meat production in this country from the three protein sources, poultry, pork, and beef, "Quarterly meat production has been growing strongly for quite a while now. Chicken production has been expanding by at least 2%, most years closer to 3% since 2013, that's a pretty good stretch. Pork production has been expanding since 2015. Pork production here by 5% in 2019, which is a really robust rate of growth. We're looking at something more like three and a half percent for 2020, but still fairly positive, strong growth in production. Beef production has been expanding since 2016, we're down to about 1% year over year growth in beef, but that's still a fairly long stretch of positive growth in production in that market.
Anderson believes there is a strong demand side in that market. The demand was steady to a little higher in 2019, and he says exports have been much stronger, "Exports have been much stronger, and this is a pretty dramatic picture. You look at beef, pork and broiler exports; strong growth really for the last 6 or 7 years in all those species. Looking for a really nice increase in pork demand and pork exports in 2020. Not quite as dramatic, but still very nice increases in exports for beef and broilers. This largely reflects expectations that African swine fever is going to continue to force the Chinese into the world market to meet needs."
Anderson says the issue with African Swine Fever isn't just going to affect the pork market. He says the Chinese will be looking for protein across the board, "My guess is they will be taking a lot more chicken in2020. I don't know if they will take it from us, but even if they don't take it from us, that is off-take that's going to need to be made up somewhere. So I think all of these major species will be affected in a fairly significant way by African Swine Fever. At some level for the Chinese, protein is protein, and they're going to need it."
Click on the LISTEN BAR below to hear comments from Dr. Anderson's presentation at the 2020 AFBF Convention during one of their breakout sessions.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR below for today's show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
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