By Ana Mano and Peter Hobson
BARRETOS, Brazil, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Brazil overtook the U.S. as the world’s top beef producer last year, according to market estimates, after the South American country beat output forecasts by hundreds of thousands of tonnes, easing a global supply crunch and helping limit rising meat prices.
Brazil was already the largest exporter of beef, shipping nearly $17 billion worth of meat in 2025, according to government trade data released on Tuesday. Beef production numbers aren’t due until February, but analysts have recently raised their estimates. Farmers sent more animals to slaughter, taking advantage of strong export demand from countries such as China and the US, where low supply has pushed beef prices to record highs.
Increased culling usually leads to a period of low production as producers retain animals to breed and rebuild herds. But productivity gains in Brazil may limit or even prevent a decline, industry insiders say. They noticed that farms had faster insemination rates, fattened them faster and slaughtered them younger.
“Ten years ago, the average age of cattle slaughtered in Brazil was five years old,” said Vinicius Barbosa, a commercial manager responsible for tens of thousands of cattle at the CMA feedlot in Barretos, about 260 miles (420 km) north of Sao Paulo. “It’s now 36 months and fast approaching 24,” he said.
Mauricio Nogueira, head of livestock consultancy Athenagro, said Brazil’s beef production had far exceeded his forecasts in 2025. Production was up 4% for the year, where he had forecast a 2.7% decline. The increase of about 800,000 tonnes was about equal to the total annual exports of Argentina, the world’s largest beef shipper.
Rabobank, which had expected beef production in Brazil to decline in 2025, now sees a 0.5% increase to 12.5 million tonnes carcass weight equivalent. The US Department of Agriculture in December raised its estimate of Brazilian beef production by 450,000 tonnes to 12.35 million tonnes.
If official figures confirm market estimates, 2025 will be the first year Brazil’s output will have surpassed US output, which fell 3.9% to 11.8 million tonnes in 2025, according to USDA estimates, after years of drought.
FEEDLOTS, DRIVE OUTPUT CASING WEIGHT INCREASE
U.S. beef production will fall another 0.9 percent to 11.7 million tons in 2026, the USDA said. In Brazil, the USDA and Rabobank project a drop in production, but Nogueira said increased productivity could actually increase Brazil’s output by about 300,000 tonnes.
Almost 28% of cattle slaughtered in Brazil will be fattened in farms by 2027, up from 22% in 2025, according to consultants Scot Consultoria.
“Feedlots do in 100 days for cattle what pasture does in 18 to 24 months,” Barbosa said, adding that CMA’s Barretos feedlot will process 80,000 cattle in 2026, up from 65,000 last year.
Brazil’s booming corn ethanol industry generates a byproduct known as dry distillers grains, which has more protein than corn and helps cattle fatten up faster, analysts said.
Cows are becoming pregnant more often as farmers adopt more efficient insemination techniques, allowing producers to cull more animals without reducing herd size.
Scot Consultoria expects Brazil’s pregnancy rate – the proportion of females that become pregnant during the breeding season – to rise to 54% in 2027 from an estimated 50% in 2026.
Better genetics also improves cattle growth and improves meat quality, analysts say. And Brazil has yet to match the US’s 90% proportion of cattle passing through feedlots, or Australia’s 40%.
If Brazil’s gestation rate rose to 66 percent, equivalent to neighboring Argentina, the number of calves born each year would rise from about 32 million to 40 million, according to consultants Datagro. The pregnancy rate in Canada is 96 percent, they said.
Government data shows Brazil has 238 million cattle, more than double the US’s 94 million. Higher productivity would allow production to increase without increasing the number of cattle or the area of pasture. This could ease an economic factor in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
Brazil’s cattle herd is expected to grow by just 4% between 2024 and 2034, while beef production increases by 24%, according to the Brazilian beef exporters group ABIEC. U.S. beef production will increase 3.5 percent and the number of cattle will increase 5 percent during that time, according to USDA estimates.
KEY BRAZIL WHICH MANUFACTURERS HAVE DECLINED THE MOST
Global beef prices will depend on whether Brazil can avoid a drop in production this year.
The USDA expects output of the world’s six largest producers to fall 2.4 percent in 2026 — the biggest annual decline in decades — after rising 0.4 percent in 2025. Those producers are Brazil, the U.S., China, the European Union, Argentina and Australia. The list excludes India, which the USDA names as one of the top six beef producers, even though the country produces buffalo meat rather than beef.
The USDA expects Brazilian production to fall 5.3 percent to 11.7 million carcase weight equivalent tons this year. If Nogueira’s estimates are confirmed and production rises to around 12.6 million tonnes, the decline in the top six producers would be just 0.2%.
“There has never been so much international demand for Brazilian beef,” said Datagro analyst Guilherme Jank, adding that local beef packers have increased capacity.
“We are witnessing a significant change in the way the beef cattle supply system works in Brazil in terms of quality, scale, efficiency and productivity,” he said.
(Reporting by Ana Mano in Barretos and Peter Hobson in Canberra Additional reporting by Ella Cao in Beijing and Tom Polansek in Chicago Editing by Brad Haynes and David Gregorio)
