Now, with political restrictions blocking exports lifted, the Argentine beef industry is moving to recover its footing says Gonzalo Alverez Maldonado, president of the IPCVA, the Argentine Beef Promotion Institute.
“At the moment, we’re eating around 93% of beef production internally, and exporting 7%, but we want to get back to the old split of 80% internal, 20% exported,” he told Globalmeatnews.com at the Anuga Trade Fair earlier this month.
He said the IPCVA had set a target of exporting 400,000 tonnes (t) of beef, a considerable rise on the export figures for 2011 which stood at 250,000t, but still below their record highs in 2005 of 770,000t.
The restrictions, imposed by the government to ensure beef prices remained low within the domestic market, saw beef exports between 2009 and 2010 fall by 53%, and Maldonado said the drop was also mirrored in production, with cattle numbers falling by nearly 10m between 2005 and 2010 to just 48m head.
“Cattle production did fall, but this has now started to increase again, we’re now up around 52m head,” he said. The country has also invested in genetics, and he said new breeds and production methods were being introduced to create more efficient and productive animals, which he claimed had seen an increase in births of calves.
Another key to boosting export is to change domestic consumption, said Jorg Torelli, a director with the IPCVA. “At the moment, we eat around 66kg per capita head of beef, 42kg of chicken, and just 20kg of pork.” He said that, in conjunction with increasing beef production, work would be done to encourage increased consumption of pork to free up beef for export.
When it comes to export markets, the EU remains an important market on price, but China and Russia offer opportunities for volume, said Maldonado, and work was under way to gain access to the North American market, which offers a high-quality outlet for Argentine beef.