Beef and Gasoline

I am certainly no economic genius. In fact, I have had to use an accountant for years to do my taxes because all of that information leaves me somewhat mystified. However, I just learned something interesting from Kevin Good, who is a Senior Market Analyst for CattleFax . There is a tie in between the price of gasoline and the amount of beef that is consumed by the American public. With lower gas prices in recent months, beef consumption has gone up. Want to know why? Here is Mr. Good: “The average driver will save about $600 this year because of lower gas prices so if gas prices go down the average consumer will spend more time going out to eat.”

 

Now he didn’t mention beef specifically but we can infer. Dr. Jason Ahola an Associate Professor of Beef Production Systems in the Department of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University has done research showing that the general population in America prefers beef to other types of protein. Dr. Lindsay Chichester, who did her doctoral research on consumer preferences in the meat industry, did research pointing out that nearly half of her research subjects put beef as their No. 1 protein choice, and 97% indicated they ate beef between one and 12 times each week. So doing the math, given that we learned that with a little more money in their pockets, more people are going out to eat and we also learned that they are more likely to choose beef than any other type of protein, low gas prices mean more beef consumption.