In the following article Mr. Richard Rains who was managing director of exporter Sanger Australia for 40 years discusses the challenges and great opportunities facing the Australian beef industry. Although India is the world’s largest beef exporter (exporting 100,000 tons per month) and Brazil’s beef production increased 13% year on year in 2013, both countries do not have access to the premium markets that Australia does, either because of lack of quality products or difficulties with disease outbreaks. In the past 12 months Australian beef trade with China has increased significantly. In 2012-13 Australia shipped 92,000 tons of beef to China while just a year earlier this figure was 19,000 tons. China’s meat protein consumption has increased 18% from 64 million tons to 78 million tons and China now consumes twice as much meat protein as the U.S. Mr. Rains also predicts that within 15 years the U.S. will be energy self-sufficient mostly because of enormous quantities of natural gas being discovered. This will lead to the end of subsidized ethanol which in turn will lead to cheaper corn and a significant increase in U.S. beef production.
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