Strong growth in the export of U.S. meat products in recent years, combined with
increasing demand in Asia for feed grains to supply expanding livestock industries in that region,
has focused attention on tools to analyze the potential for growth in these markets. One common
means of addressing some of these needs is to build structural models of these countries’
livestock industries that can be used to provide information about the prospects for meat and
related agricultural commodities, as well as analyze the impact of likely policy change. It is that
interest that led to the respecification of structural models of the Chinese, South Korean,
Australian and European Union (EU) meat sectors, the subject of this report.
Developments in both China and South Korea are already having an impact on the export
of U.S. agricultural commodities and the prospects in both markets look bright. In South Korea,
the more liberal trade policies agreed under the recent GATT outcome are no doubt having a
positive influence, while current trends in China’s imports of meat and grains coupled with its
commitment to APEC to become an open market by 2020, all bode well for future trade.
The future of livestock industries in Australia and the EU will also play an important role
in the outlook for U.S. livestock industries. Since the beef market was liberalized in 1991,
Australia has remained the United States’s major competitor in Japan, the single largest beef
export market for both countries. The United States and Australia are also competing for market
share in South Korea, the second largest export market for U.S. beef. As meat demand in these
and other Asian markets continues to increase with further growth in consumer incomes,
competition between U.S. and Australian beef is likely to intensify.