WAUSA — I came across some information from R-Calf (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Foundation) and I have permission to use it. I am passionate about the cattle industry and believe that not enough people are aware of the situation.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recently released cattle and beef trade data for December provide the whole cattle and beef trade picture for the 2020 calendar year. According to R-CALF USA, the volume of imported beef, cattle, beef variety meat and processed beef hit an all-time high of nearly 2 million metric tons, or about 4.4 billion pounds in 2020.
Calculating the volume of both cattle and beef is difficult as imported beef and beef products are recorded by weight while imported cattle are recorded by the number of head. To account for these differing measures, R-CALF USA converts imported cattle numbers to pounds by multiplying the number of imported cattle by each years’ average cattle carcass weight. This enables R-CALF USA to express both imports and exports of beef and cattle in terms of weight.
The USDA’s recently updated data also show the average price of fed cattle in 2020 was just under $1.09 per pound, while all-fresh retail beef prices averaged about $6.39 per pound, the highest yearly average all-fresh beef price in history.
R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said the 2020 average fed cattle price was lower than in any year during the past decade. He said in 2011 the average fed cattle price was $1.15 per pound, and back then consumers only paid on average $4.44 per pound for all-fresh beef.
Bullard explained that these data inform both cattle producers and consumers that importing record volumes of cheaper, undifferentiated beef and cattle does not correlate with lower consumer beef prices, but it does correlate with severely depressed domestic cattle prices.
The U.S. has consistently imported more beef and cattle than it exports for the past several decades, making the U.S. a net importer of beef and cattle and causing a 30-year cumulative trade deficit of over 20 million metric tons, or about 44 billion pounds of beef and cattle.
To put this in perspective, in 2020 we exported 2.9 billion pounds of beef and cattle — the fourth-largest export volume in history — but we imported 4.4 billion pounds. That means for each 1-pound of beef and cattle exported in 2020, we imported over 1.5 pounds of beef and cattle.
As Mr. Bullard said, that’s well below the 30-year average. In other words, for 30 years we’ve imported well over 1.5 pounds of beef for each 1-pound exported. Imagine how much stronger our domestic food supply chain would be, and how many more opportunities U.S. cattle farmers and ranchers would have if America stopped displacing the production of our American family farmers and ranchers with billions of pounds of foreign beef and cattle.
LaNELL KUMM
February 18, 2021 at 10:05PM
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Why do we import beef? — LaNell Kumm | Letters To Editor | norfolkdailynews.com - Norfolk Daily News
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