Opportunities For U.S. Beef Export Market

While at the Washington Cattlemen's Association Convention at Suncadia this week, I had the opportunity to visit with U.S. Meat Export Federation's International Marketing and Programs Assistant Vice President Greg Hanes shares one of the exciting opportunities for U.S. beef.

Hanes: "The key message today is that there is huge opportunity for the U.S. beef industry especially in Asia right now. What we are seeing is our key competitor in those Asian markets is really in a similar situation to which we were in a couple of years ago. So they have had drought. They have liquidated their herd over the last few years. So that resulted in them having a lot of inexpensive beef — higher quantities. So they were moving in and trying to capture marketshare while at the same time our supplies were lower and our prices were higher. Now that has really turned around now. So what Australia is in the situation now where they are in the bottom of the trough as far as their their cattle herd. They need to hold back. So their beef supplies are dramatically shrinking. Their prices are going up and at the same time now our supplies are increasing and our prices are down. There a lot of other advantages as far as exchange rates, the competitive domestic beef prices in Japan and Korea and some of these free trade agreements things that really give us a huge advantage to be very aggressive in these markets and displace the Australians."