RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – This year, Brazilians will consume the lowest amount of beef per person in 25 years, estimates CONAB (National Foodstuff Supply Company). According to the agency, the crisis scenario of recent years – with the 2014 – 2016 recession, the slow recovery from 2017 to 2019 and the new crisis caused by Covid-19 since last year – has been driving down the total consumption of meat (beef, pork and chicken) since 2014.
From 2013, when it reached 96.7 kilos per person per year, the peak since official records began in 1996, there have been 6 consecutive years of decline. This year, total consumption should be 5.3% below the peak, or 91.6 kilos per person.
Lower consumption is directly related to price.
The increase in production for export by meat packing plants, in a scenario of already high international prices, increases the price of meat in the domestic market as well. The product’s accumulated inflation stands at 35.7% in the latest 12-months, according to IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics).
According to a CONAB survey, the average annual demand for meat in the European Union over the past five years was 89.3 kilos per inhabitant. In Australia, it was 101.2 kilos; in the United States, 116.8 kilos. “Brazil is eating less beef, it has reduced quite substantially, but it has increased the consumption of chicken and pork. Overall consumption fell very slightly,” said De Zen.
With lower incomes, families generally buy less meat and replace the more expensive meats – usually beef – with cheaper ones – such as chicken. The drop in beef consumption is due to a rearrangement in the share of the different types of protein in Brazilians’ shopping basket.
Exports
The lower internal consumption has yet another explanation: the strong external demand, mainly from China. The rise in Chinese orders is related to a disease – not Covid-19, but African swine fever (ASF), which has plagued the herds of the Asian country and neighboring nations since 2018.
The impact of ASF on China’s swine herds is severe, according to José Carlos Hausknecht, director of the consultancy MB Agro. At the end of 2019, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) estimated at 7.7 million the number of animals slaughtered in Asian countries due to the disease, transmitted between boars and pigs, but harmless to humans.
In the international data compiled by CONAB, the total annual consumption of meat in China averaged 51.1 kilos per inhabitant in the last five years, which signals that the demand for exports to the Asian giant tends to be maintained, as the income of Chinese families continues its upward trajectory.
In China, pork is the most consumed meat. The country is the largest global producer, but demand from its 1.3 billion population requires imports. The drop in production in 2018 and 2019 was so large that it led the Chinese to expand their purchases abroad of all types of meat, not only pork, but also beef and poultry.
This was the driver of Brazilian beef exports – which rose from 1.479 million tons and US$6.032 billion in 2017 to 2.013 million tons and US$8.506 billion in 2020, according to ABIEC, the exporters’ association.
Chicken and fish
In the supermarket aisles, Brazilians are struggling to adapt to the rising price of beef, according to reports from supermarkets in Barra da Tijuca, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Rio’s West Zone.
For the past 6 months, the family of systems analyst Ricardo Marques, 60, has been reducing beef consumption because of higher prices. He estimates that consumption has dropped to a third of its usual level. “Once in a while I buy it, but I wait for a promotion. Even on promotion it is expensive,” he added.
With the more expensive product, the solution is to migrate to chicken and, “eventually,” fish. “And even so the price of chicken is rising,” pondered Marques, who is aware of the influence of the international market on prices. “They are exporting everything to China and we are paying the price,” he said.
Marques lives with his wife and son in Barra da Tijuca. He shops at the market three times a week. This way, he can closely monitor the escalating food prices. “The food inflation is going up, I don’t know how the poorest people are surviving,” said the systems analyst.
Business administrator Daniela Cristiane Rocha, 39, has also reduced the amount of beef in her family’s shopping basket. Chicken has gained prominence because of the price, but also by demand from her children, because of the “fitness fad,” she said, also while doing her shopping.
“We are consuming more chicken, sometimes fish. Even fish, which used to be more expensive, nowadays is worth much more than (red) meat,” said the administrator, who buys vegetables and meat every week for her family, made up of herself, her husband and her two children.
Living alone in Rio, retiree Maria de Fátima da Silva, 64, had already been reducing her beef consumption because of her health. Chicken, fish, fruits and vegetables now take up more space in her diet. But that doesn’t mean that the retiree is not alarmed by the higher prices of beef. She often stays at her daughter’s house to take care of her grandson, who does not go without with beef.
“It’s very expensive. Rump steak, which we buy for R$29.90 (per kilo), I’ve already bought for R$22 (per kilo). For me, it’s expensive,” said the retiree, while choosing a cut for her grandson.
Source: R7