Cattle Export Leads to Increase in Price of Beef on Local Market

The National Agriculture and Trade Show comes up this weekend, but fan favorite Running W Brand Meats says it will not be attending the event this year. The company, in a Facebook post, cited a shortage of supply in beef and pork within the country, as one of the reasons for their decision. So, we reached out to the Belize Livestock Producers Association to get more information on what may be the cause of the shortage. And, as we found out from Mindy Garcia, the General Manager of the Belize Livestock Producers Association, there is no shortage of beef in the country. The issue, she says, is that buyers in Mexico and Guatemala are willing to pay higher prices than the slaughterhouses in Belize. As a result, ranchers are reserving their cattle for export.

Mindy Garcia, General Manager, BLPA

Mindy Garcia

“There has been a recent increase in cattle prices and that is due to the recent announcement of the tariff removal for the Mexican export. This has brought competition among buyers, the Guatemalan buyers and the Mexican buyers. So farmers are now starting to benefit from a slight increase in cattle prices and farmers will sell to buyers that pay them the most. So, that is the delima that the slaughter facilities are finding at the moment, because they have informed, normally they have their farms and they would slaughter animals but they don’t have enough to slaughter, either because the animals are not ready to be slaughters as yet. So, they depend on the farmers to buy cattle now at their slaughtering facility. But, if there is a slight increase in prices for the beef farmers will wait and if Guatemala is paying them a little bit more, or if the Mexicans are paying them a little bit more they  the farmers would save their animals.”