The Economics of the Red Meat Industry: A Value Chain Perspective

Abstract

Today I have been allocated 20 minutes or so to discuss the "Economics of the red meat industry". No small task. I thought about reporting the results of different analyses I have done in relation to beef production systems, marketing margins, or large industry-level models. But, given that we have already had an excellent overview of domestic and overseas markets from MLA, and detailed analyses from the processor and producer perspectives, I thought that I might try something a little different and make some suggestions about how the whole industry might improve future performance. I start by asking "Whose economics is it?", and follow by suggesting that the answer is "It must be everyone's". This leads to the idea that the way to analyse the economics of the red meat industry is by assessing and evaluating the performance of the value chains that comprise this industry. This is based on the following two assertions: First, global food, beverage and fibre markets (of which the Australian red meat industry is a prime example) are now mostly networks of global value chains. Increasingly such global chains are private and powerful, closely coordinated or fully vertically integrated, self-regulated and experience-based (Griffith et al. 2012, 2015). The old ways of analysing the performance of these markets, such as described for example in Kohls and Uhl (1980), are no longer appropriate. Second and following, value chains have now become the preferred unit of enquiry for analysing and evaluating global and domestic food, beverage and fibre markets (Baker et al. 2014, Griffith et al. 2015).