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 squeeze and helping limit a rise in beef prices.
Brazil was already the biggest beef exporter, with shipments of meat worth about $17 billion in 2025, according to government trade data released Tuesday. Beef production numbers aren’t due until February, but analysts have recently raised their estimates. Short supply has pushed beef prices to record levels, as farmers cash in on high export demand from countries including China and the US.
Advanced slaughter usually leads to periods of low production as producers stop breeding animals and rebuilding herds. But productivity gains in Brazil could limit or even prevent a slowdown, industry people say. Farms inseminate cattle too quickly, fatten them up too quickly and kill them too young, they said.
“Ten years ago, the average age of slaughtered cattle in Brazil was five years,” said Vinicius Barbosa, a commercial manager responsible for thousands of cattle at the CMA feedlot in Barretos, about 260 miles (420 kilometers) north of Sao Paulo. “It has been 36 months now and soon it will be 24 months,” he said.
Mauricio Nogueira, head of livestock consultancy Athenagro, said Brazil’s beef production will exceed projections for 2025. Output rose 4% for the year, where he had predicted a 2.7% decline. The increase of about 800,000 tons was equal to the total annual exports of Argentina, the world’s No. 5 meat shipper.
Rabobank, which expects Brazil’s meat production to decline in 2025, now sees a 0.5% increase to the equivalent of 12.5 million tonnes of carcass weight. The US Department of Agriculture raised its estimate for Brazil’s beef production in December by 450,000 tonnes to 12.35 million tonnes.
If official numbers confirm market estimates, 2025 will be the first year that Brazilian production surpasses U.S. production, which is down 3.9% to 11.8 million tons in 2025, according to USDA estimates, after years of drought.
FEEDLOTS, growing carcass weight drives output
U.S. beef production will decline another 0.9% to 11.7 million tons in 2026, the USDA said. In Brazil, the USDA and Rabobank forecast a decline in production, but Nogueira said increased productivity could actually increase Brazil’s output by about 300,000 tons.
About 28% of cattle slaughtered in Brazil will be fattened in feedlots by 2027, up from 22% in 2025, according to consultant Scott Consultoria.
“A feedlot does in 100 days for cattle what pasture does between 18 and 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 is producing a byproduct known as dry distillers grains that have higher protein than corn and help fatten cattle faster, analysts said.
Cows are getting pregnant more often as farmers adopt more efficient insemination techniques that allow producers to slaughter more animals without reducing herd size.
Scott Consultoria expects Brazil’s pregnancy rate – the proportion of women who become pregnant during the breeding season – to rise to 54% in 2027 from an expected 50% in 2026.
Better genetics are also improving cattle growth and meat quality, analysts say. And Brazil still hasn’t matched the 90% proportion of cattle passing through feedlots like the United States or Australia’s 40%.
If Brazil’s pregnancy rate were to reach the level of neighboring Argentina’s at 66%, the number of calves born each year would rise from an estimated 32 million to 40 million, according to consultancy Datagro. The pregnancy rate in Canada is 96%, they said.
Government figures show Brazil has 238 million head of cattle, more than twice the 94 million in the US. This could facilitate an economic driver of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
Brazil’s cattle herd is expected to grow by just 4% between 2024 and 2034, while beef production will increase by 24%, according to ABIEC, the Brazilian beef exporter group. USDA estimates that U.S. beef production will increase by 3.5% and cattle numbers will increase by 5%.
Brazil scales down the key as top producers
Global beef prices will depend on whether Brazil can avoid a production slump this year.
The USDA expects output of the world’s six largest producers to fall a combined 2.4% in 2026 — the biggest annual decline in decades — after rising 0.4% in 2025. These producers are Brazil, US, China, European Union, Argentina and Australia. The list does not include India, which the USDA names as one of the six top beef producers, even though that country produces buffalo meat instead of beef.
The USDA expects Brazil’s production to fall 5.3% this year to 11.7 million tons of carcass weight equivalent. If Nogueira’s estimate is confirmed and production rises to around 12.6 million tonnes, the decline in the top six producers will be only 0.2%.
“There has never been so much international demand for Brazilian beef,” said Datagro analyst, Guilherme Jank, adding that local beef packers have also increased capacity.
“We are seeing for the first time a significant change in how the beef supply system in Brazil works in terms of quality, scale, efficiency and productivity,” he said.
(Reporting by Ana Mano in Barrettos and Peter Hobson in Canberra; Additional reporting by Ella Cao in Beijing and Tom Polancek in Chicago; Editing by Brad Haynes and David Gregorio)
