It’s unfortunate that Irish beef has been banned from China once again. I recently had the chance to speak at China’s national beef industry symposium and was given the topic of sharing some of the lessons from Ireland’s beef industry development. The key theme that I highlighted about Ireland’s beef industry was the importance of getting more from less, as improved genetics and management showed better carcase weights, while producing high-quality beef backed by national programmes, such as Origin Green.

I am proud to be able to share that the systems and farmers that support this beef production are world class and in constant evolution, and for China there is plenty of interest in deeper collaboration.

However, after my presentation, I stayed on to listen to a visiting professor from Sao Paolo University who gave a fascinating overview of the Brazilian beef sector. The changes that Brazil’s own beef industry has undergone in the past five years are quite stunning.

Brazil has enabled a herd increase of over 3m head of cattle, increasing its exports and level of feeding. Professor Luiz noted that all Brazilian beef coming to China does not hail from the Amazon deforestation regions and here we get to the crux of the issue.

In 2018, China’s average beef consumption per person stood at 5.3kg. By the end of 2023, it will reach 7.5kg. This is a strong increase in demand across a population base of 1.4bn people. This extra beef has largely come from Brazil, driving its exports and expansion. China now imports over 3m tonnes – making it the key player for international beef trading.

As Chinese interlocutors often joke, even if Ireland sold all of its beef to China it still wouldn’t be enough to meet the demand. For China’s policy-makers, there are two pressure points.

Firstly, it aims to achieve 85% self-sufficiency domestically (which is in itself a major challenge). Secondly, they want to have stable beef imports from key markets.

The total market requirement is over 10m tonnes.

Two things are driving Brazil’s surge in China. First is its politics. China and Brazil have a strong and strategic political relationship, where Huawei, COFCO and other Chinese giants have a significant imprint in the Brazilian market. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are a political block, and Brazil and China have many common interests.

Secondly, Chinese buyers see in Brazil an ability to produce at very low prices combined with a stunning ability to scale. However, Brazil’s expansion for the Chinese market also leaves it a little bit exposed.

Firstly, when demand is softer, China will not buy the amounts of beef expected (which has happened already in August of this year), and there is no other market in the world that would need anything like the volumes (and quality) of the excess beef it is creating.

Secondly, Chinese consumers will be discerning and choose quality as the market becomes more sophisticated. As I sat there listening to the scale of the expansion, it did strike me that there is an inherent unfairness.

As Irish farmers are pressured to reduce their herd sizes to meet national and EU requirements, a few thousand miles away rainforests are being cleared to add an extra 3m cattle. It leaves us with a conundrum. What would Ireland need to do differently to become a truly strategic partner to the Chinese beef market? Hopefully, we won’t have to wait as long as our last market absence to get Irish beef back into China.