Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays features comments from Kansas State University Extension Livestock Market Economist Dr. Glynn Tonsor, who talks about beef demand by looking at the lagging data directly from USDA. While there are no numbers yet for early 2025, all of the data for 2024 is in.
According to Tonsor, domestic beef demand in December 2024 was almost 4% higher than in December 2023, and for 10 of the 12 months in the year, beef demand was higher.
“When you have demand increasing, and supply turned out a little bit up, but we were actually expecting it to be down, and we are pretty confident it will be down in 2025,” Tonsor said. “That demand pull was key to those higher prices in 2024 that most cattlemen experienced.”
He spoke more about pork and chicken demand last year. Click the listen bar at the top of the page to hear the whole conversation.
Regarding export demand, foreign demand for beef was up 5% in December 2024. On a monthly basis, foreign demand for beef was higher in each of the 12 months of the year.
“Not only was domestic demand up in ten of the twelve, but foreign demand was up in all twelve, so combining those two, demand for U.S. beef was quite strong in 2024,” Tonsor emphasized. “That underpinned those elevated cattle prices in 2024.”
One concerning thing that may impact consumer attitudes in 2025 is the high price of eggs. Tonsor suspects that it may open a broader food-price discussion.
Tonsor explained, “For context, the percentage of our budget that is spent on food is very good around the world, and the percentage of our budget that is spent on eggs is a very small set of that for food. I want to be sensitive to it, but I think we overstate the direct impact that eggs have on consumer’s budgets and so forth, but what is very relevant is if it impacts their sentiment.”
While the relevance for eggs is indirect from the meat and livestock industry, it can cause consumer pessimism, and they may tighten their wallets, causing what Tonsor called a “self-induced recession.”
“There is a real risk that the egg narrative turns into an adverse sentiment situation for consumers and becomes a headwind as 2025 develops,” Tonsor said.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR at the top of the story for today’s show, and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today
