THE sheer scale of growth in Australian beef exports to the United States in 2025 and 2026 has seen an interesting milestone reached.

For what may be the first time in hisytory, volume of beef shipped into the US is now exceeding the volume utilised on the Australia domestic market.

Australian beef consumers have traditionally been the largest single ‘customer’ for our annual beef production, typically occupying around 30pc (give or take) of total beef production.

Historically, domestic volume has tended to be somewhat inelastic, compared with exports.

One of the three largest export markets (currently the US, but at different times in the past, China or even occasionally, Japan) have historically occupied second place behind the domestic market.

Beef Central asked Meat & Livestock Australia for some help in trying to verify our suspicion that the change has indeed happened.

While there has been some moderate decline in domestic beef consumption per capita over the longer term, it is the dramatic rise in trade into the US that has really driven the latest milestone.

As readers will be aware, the US cattle herd has descended to 70-year lows over the past three years due to drought, and lack of any clear signs of herd recovery. That’s stimulated a sharp rise in imports, both from Australia and other destinations like Brazil.

Australia’s export volume to the US for the calendar year to date (to 21 October) has reached 410,000 tonnes – up 50,000t or 15pc on last year’s equivalent period, which was already close to record-high. Some analysts have total exports to the US this year topping 460,000-480,000t.

Comparing figures

Comparing boneless export tonnage figures to domestic Australian consumption is not a simple comparison between two sets of equivalent figures, however.

Neither the industry nor the Federal Government directly measures domestic volume – instead, a series of assumptions have to be made to calculate estimated domestic utilisation. Essentially this is the difference between total national beef production and exports, effectively, measuring the ‘gap’. In economists’ and analysts’ circles, this is sometimes called ‘disappearance.’

According to MLA’s 2025-26 financial year estimates, domestic beef utilisation was 565,856 tonnes (carcase weight), which when broken down into boneless equivalent (68pc) represents 384,782t carton (or shipped) weight.

By comparison, exports to the US over the same financial year ended 30 June totalled 493,419t shipped weight.

“On that basis, it’s safe to assume that in this calendar year, the US will take more volume than the Australian domestic market,” an MLA spokesman told Beef Central yesterday.

However, he stressed that the comparison should be interpreted with caution, as domestic utilisation is derived from domestic disappearance data and is only a proxy for actual consumption.

It’s difficult to establish whether the domestic market has ever lost its mantle as the largest user of Australian beef before –  certainly not in recent decades. But if it did, it’s likely to have been through the 1970s-80s period when Australian beef exports were much less diverse, and the US was our major export destination. Back then, however, domestic beef consumption was much higher than today. That’s because the traditional ‘meat and three veg’ diet that many Australians ate decades ago is now far more diverse, leaving somewhat less space for red meat. School tuck shops (in metropolitan areas, at least) now regularly sell sushi rolls, alongside meat pies.

Strong domestic performance

The clear message from the above comparison is that the story is way more about the recent significant growth in the US trade, rather than any negative factors in the domestic market.

“In fact, beef is doing really well in the Australian domestic retail segment,” MLA’s chief marketing and communications officer Nathan Low told Beef Central.

Latest 12 months data to 4 October showed domestic beef value 12 percent higher than the same time last year; volume up 1.1pc; and price up 10.8pc.

“So even with retail prices up double digits, beef is growing its value share and moving more volume in retail,” Mr Low said.

“The demand and affordability is still there for a large cohort of consumers, and survey work is showing we’re also getting some of our best-ever brand equity scores.

“So the desire for beef is strong, but that’s just the part of the story we can measure. We don’t have equivalent value/price data for food service, but it’s reasonable to assume some of that retail growth is being driven by consumers switching a dining-out occasion to an in-home occasion (due to cost of living), thus shifting the sale from an unmeasured channel to one that we have data for.”

Beef Central wrote about the recent trend back towards more home entertaining instead of dining out – seen most graphically during the COVID period – caused by cost of living pressures in this earlier wholesale beef price and demand report.

• MLA will present more data on consumer trends and market intelligence at the upcoming MLA Updates program and AGM in Townsville on 24 November.