2024: A Year of Beef Rationing

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

Where’s the beef…going?

We started out yesterday’s program talking about meat exports and letting you know that, while the potential for pork is looking better compared to this last year, beef is seeing some challenges. For one, Erin Borrer, vice president of economic analysis with the U.S. Meat Export Federation says she sees 2024 as the real rationing year for U.S. beef demand. Put simply, production will decline further and it’ll be time to see who is willing to pay more for product.

While that can be a bit intimidating to any end user, she said there is some optimism out there…

“We could see a couple of tailwinds in 2024. Recently, after the Federal Reserve meeting in December, we're hearing a bit more from the markets about lower interest rate expectations and some hope that we could have a bit weaker dollar, at least for commodity exports. We've seen these inventory pressures for actual meat in freezers and markets starting to ease, and so I think there's some optimism there as importers have kind of adjusted. As they expect higher U.S. beef prices, I think they'll be more willing to buy because we have seen that pricing situation normalize.”

Erin Borror, U.S. Meat Export Federation.