NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
April 27, 2000
The total annual per capita consumption of red meat and poultry in the United States has increased by 10 to 20 pounds since 1970, but the growth hasn't been uniform. U.S. consumers are eating considerably more poultry and less beef, veal and lamb, says an agricultural economist at North Dakota State University.
"Americans have doubled their per capita consumption of chicken and turkey, but their beef consumption has declined by 20 percent," says Dwight Aakre, extension farm management specialist at NDSU. "Pork consumption has remained nearly constant for the past 30 years."
During the decade of the 1970s, per capita consumption of red meat and poultry, as measured by retail weight, totaled about 180 to 190 pounds, but annual per capita consumption grew to more than 200 pounds in the 1990s, Aakre says. From 1970 to 1999, the U.S. population grew by 30 percent while U.S. production of red meat and poultry nearly doubled overall. Beef and pork production increased minimally during this period while chicken and turkey production experienced about a 300-percent increase.
"The considerable growth in production was possible as long as the purchasing habits of consumers remained constant, in total. But now production has exceeded the growth in domestic consumption," Aakre says, "and as with most agricultural products, U.S. livestock producers are relying more heavily on a growing export trade to consume the increased domestic production."
The United States has reduced net imports of beef and veal from about 8 percent of production in the 1970s to less than 2 percent of production during the 1990s, Aakre says. At the same time, the U.S. pork industry has changed from net imports of 2 percent of production to net exports of 2 percent of production.
"Just in the 1990s alone, U.S. broiler exports increased by 400 percent," Aakre says.
All segments of the livestock industry in the United States have the capacity to produce far more than American consumers demand, and so U.S. producers will become more dependent on exports in the future. Aakre says a challenge for the livestock industry is to develop markets for the complete array of meat products, because unlike the grain market where a specific type of grain can meet the demands of a specific customer, livestock production involves many end products.
"The production of beef, for example, results in several different cuts of meat, for which strong export markets may exist for some cuts and not for others," Aakre concludes. "A key to profitable production involves finding markets for all of the products."
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Source: Dwight Aakre (701) 231-7378
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136
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