Measures of Changes in Demand for Beef, Pork, and Chicken, 1975-1998

Abstract

The past 25 years have seen changes of huge proportions in the meat and poultry sectors. Few agricultural commodities have received more attention from private firms and public policy-making sectors, and these tightly intertwined sectors have been the subject of considerable investigation and discussion by professional economists and market analysts. From a starting point of the mid-1970s, beef has lost its preeminent position in an increasingly competitive marketplace. On a retail weight basis, per-capita consumption of beef plunged from nearly 95 lb in 1976 to just above 65 lb in the early 1990s. Projections for 1999 suggest that per-capita beef offerings, and therefore per-capita consumption, will decline still further to near 63 lb, a precipitous decline from about 68 lb in 1998. That type of change in per-capita consumption, which is a reflection of per-capita supply, suggests that major challenges face the underlying industry. Indeed, the total cattle inventory that had exceeded 132 million head in 1975 declined to just over 95 million head in the early 1990s. The beef cow herd declined from above 45.7 million to near 32.4 million head across the same time period. There has been widespread discussion in the popular press, trade magazines, and within the leadership circles of the beef industry about a 34 percent loss in market share. Significant economic pain, in the form of low prices and producer-level losses, has accompanied these developments. The picture in the poultry sector is different and roughly inverse to what has happened in beef. Since the mid-1970s, per-capita offerings for chicken measured on a ready-to-cook weight basis have gone from around 40 lb to 83.7 lb