Beef Down Under

I just completed another swing through Iowa including a presentation at the Hancock County Farm Bureau Ag Day breakfast. This trip included four local schools with more than 100 FFA members and, as always, it proved to be very inspirational to me.

2018 marks the 100th year in existence for the American Farm Bureau and along with that a 100th anniversary for some county organizations such as the Hancock County group. In today’s world of accelerated in-fighting in all organizations, we must take our hats off to any group that is still going strong with 100 years under their belt.

I was also fortunate that a good friend from Iowa Falls, Larry Sailer, was able to come by. Sailer is part of the group from the Iowa Farm Bureau that just returned from Australia. As the self-proclaimed expert on all things Australia because of my journeys “Down Under,” I found my knowledge to be outdated on one interesting subject.

Sailer said, “Trent I was really shocked to learn that Australia consumes more pork than beef.” I told Sailer that I had been there a bunch of times and they were not good pork consumers at all. Australia is all about beef and lamb. Wrong.

In 1977, beef was the clear meat of choice in Australia with 70.35 kilograms per capita consumption. Quite interestingly that is the same year that consumption of chicken caught up with lamb consumption at 15.75 kg. Pork and chicken have actually experienced parallel growth since that period of time but, like the United States, chicken is king in Australia at just short of 50kg annually.

Pork tied with beef in 2015. In looking at the consumption data, pork has climbed steadily and beef has been skiing toward the bottom of the mountain since 1977. While beef still has higher per capita consumption than lamb, it won’t for long if these trends continue.

Obviously all of the recent awareness leads to a discussion about what is happening with beef? Australia is a country that, from my perspective, has typically celebrated beef production and consumption. While wool has always been Australia’s mainstay, after that Australia is a beef producer. So what is the deal?

I realize I should provide an answer instead of just hypothesizing but it is relevant if for no other reason than because Australia is our No. 1 competitor when it comes to selling beef into Asian countries.

In 2011, on my first trip to the BeefEx event, I spoke in Toowoomba, Queensland. The hot topic of the day was the coming carbon tax. It was clearly stated that beef producers would be hit the hardest by this flawed model based on admittedly incorrect data put forth by the United Nations. Whether or not the carbon tax actually impacts beef consumption or not, it clearly has created the perception that beef production is against planet health instead of sharing the truth about how it can actually improve the earth.

The answer posed to me by a friend from Australia was that we need to remember Australia is a producing nation; meaning that with a population of only 28 million, they really don’t need to focus on domestic beef consumption because countries like Japan are willing to pay more for beef and that is a much better market for the beef producers.

Thirdly and really interesting to note, is that fact that since World War II, Australia has had an open immigration policy. In fact, they have been working hard at inviting a work force to move to the country. Recently I see the debate flaring up again because nearly 10 million families have migrated into the country and there is discussion about proper housing. The vast majority of those immigrants are from Asian countries and beef has never been their preference.

So at the end of the day all I have really done is propose what might be going on. I can’t say thank you enough to my friend Larry for bringing up the topic for discussion and consternation. It is really interesting how drastically things have changed since my last trip nearly three years ago. Regardless of the cause, I feel it is reason for us here in the United States to pay attention and understand the dynamic.

The message I am promoting, contrary to public belief, is that for the health of the soil and the planet we must ramp up the livestock inventory globally. The more animals we have, the greater the demand for plants and thus the more greenhouse gases (aka plant food) we utilize so both human and planet health reap the benefits.

Editor’s note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.LoosTales.com, or email Trent at [email protected].