Brazil surpassing US as top beef producer, easing global supply squeeze

Almost 28% of cattle slaughtered in Brazil will be fattened in feedlots by 2027, up from 22% in 2025, according to consultants Scot Consultoria.

"Feedlots do in ​100 days for cattle what pasture does in between 18 and 24 months," said Barbosa, adding that CMA's Barretos feedlot would process 80,000 cattle in 2026, up from 65,000 last year.

Brazil's booming corn ethanol industry is generating ‌a byproduct known as dried distillers grains that has higher protein than corn and helps cattle fatten faster, analysts said.

Cows are becoming pregnant more often as farmers adopt more efficient insemination techniques, allowing producers to slaughter more animals without reducing herd size.

Scot Consultoria expects Brazil's pregnancy rate - the proportion of females that become pregnant during a breeding season - to rise to 54% in 2027 from an expected 50% in 2026.

Better genetics are also improving cattle growth and boosting meat quality, analysts say. And Brazil still has not matched the 90% proportion of cattle passing through feedlots as in the U.S., or Australia's 40%.

If Brazil's pregnancy rate rose to 66%, equivalent to neighbouring Argentina, the number of calves birthed each year would rise from an estimated 32 million to 40 million, according to consultants Datagro. The pregnancy rate in Canada is 96%, they said.

Government data show Brazil has 238 million cattle, well over double the 94 ⁠million in the U.S. Higher productivity would allow output to expand without increasing cattle numbers or the area of pasture land. ​That could ease one economic driver of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Brazil's cattle herd is expected to grow just 4% between 2024 and ​2034 while beef production increases 24%, according to Brazilian beef exporter group ABIEC. U.S. beef production will rise 3.5% and cattle numbers will grow 5% over that period, by USDA estimates.

BRAZIL KEY AS TOP PRODUCERS SCALE DOWN

Global beef prices will hinge on whether Brazil can avoid a production downturn this year.

The USDA expects output in the world's six biggest producers to ‍fall in 2026 by a combined 2.4% - the biggest annual ⁠drop in decades - after rising 0.4% in 2025. These 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 six top beef producers even though that country produces buffalo meat rather than beef.

The USDA expects Brazilian production to fall 5.3% to 11.7 million tons carcass weight equivalent this year. If Nogueira's estimates are confirmed and output ⁠rises instead to around 12.6 million tons, the decline in the top six producers would be just 0.2%.

"There has never been so much international demand for Brazilian beef," said Guilherme Jank, a Datagro analyst, adding that local beef packers have also ramped up capacity.

"We are witnessing ‌firsthand a significant shift in how 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 CanberraAdditional reporting by Ella Cao in Beijing and Tom Polansek in ChicagoEditing by Brad Haynes and David Gregorio)