10-19 FB Beef Exports

10-19 FB Beef Exports

Great news from the beef industry in Idaho. The beef export business is booming.  I had a wonderful conversation the other day with the Executive Director of the Idaho Beef Council. Traci O’Donnell is totally on top of her job and is serving beef producers in our state very well. Case in point… beef exports to international partners have recently been at an all-time high. Here is Traci:  “with 96% of the worlds population outside of the United States, exports are a huge opportunity for us in the beef industry when it comes to increasing beef demand. 2010 was a record year for beef exports, our exports reached a value of more than $4 billion, that is the highest level on record and currently we are on a track to exceed that this year. This is great news for our beef producers and equates to about $200  in value per head for fed  slaughter. That is music to everybody’s ears, particularly beef producers, but I am hearing between the drought, the cost of hay and corn, that the beef industry is struggling in the sense that there is not enough beef. That is correct. On one side we have shrinking cow herds and shrinking numbers of the overall, but the good news on the demand side of it is that we have golden opportunities on the side of US exports to bring that price per head up for export markets.

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