Opportunity to establish South Africa as beef exporter
Now is the time to establish South Africa as a beef exporting country. The opportunity has never been this great!
The international herd of beef is declining. Globally, reproductive cows needs less expensive and extensive grazing. Their productivity is simply too low to justify intensive feeding systems while urban expansion and infrastructure developments threaten natural grazing.
Natural resources are utilized to the maximum. But slaughtering increase in spite of declining herd numbers. The productivity of intensive beef production systems increases but the demand for beef out of Asia and Africa increase even more. Therefore, beef prices increase globally. Consequently, China considers purchasing the largest cattle station in Australia which equals almost two-thirds in size the land area of Britain. This is a quite upsetting idea for patriotic Australians.
Due the higher beef prices globally and the weak Rand import prices for beef exceeds domestic consumer prices. This development offers an opportunity for our beef industry to develop. We therefore need good policy and protocols on beef exports in order to exploit longer term export opportunities to Asia.
The time has come to negotiate export protocols to countries such as China.
