Irish R3 steer prices were €1.13/kg lower in the first week of June this year than they were a year ago. In Britain, the average steer price was 60p/kg (69c/kg) lower.

While Irish and British farmers have experienced a slump in farm-gate prices compared with last year, prices have been on the rise in the major beef-exporting countries in the world.

Cattle prices

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Cattle for processing are particularly scarce in the US at present, with the herd at its lowest point in the past 75 years. Even with Tyson closing a large factory in January and JBS announcing a closure of one of its factories last week, companies are aggressively chasing cattle supplies.

This is reflected in prices with Bord Bia reporting the equivalent of €7.48/kg now being paid for steers similar to our R3 grade, compared with €6.64/kg in the same week last year.

While scarcity is driving prices in the US, in Brazil and Australia there are ample supplies of cattle underpinning record exports in both countries.

Yet here too prices are increasing, albeit from a much lower base and even with increases, they are still well below US, Irish and UK prices.

In Australia, Bord Bia report a steer price equivalent to €4.57/kg for the first week of June, almost 20% more than the €3.82 that was being paid a year ago. In Brazil they report that prices have climbed from the equivalent of €3.24/kg a year ago to €3.92/kg in June 2026, a 21% increase.

It has been a similar trend with beef export values for beef. In Figures 1-3 we can see that the overall trend of beef exports in the United States, Brazil and Australia has been up since the start of this decade. In Figure 1, the value of US beef exports had fallen below $7,000 (€6,034) per tonne in 2020 but has been on an upward trend since then rising to $10,330 (€8,905) per tonne in the first four months of this year.

US beef commands a premium in international markets and is dominated by higher value cuts as the US is a higher user domestically of the cheaper cuts in burger manufacture.

Wider range of cuts

Brazilian beef export values are lower as shown in Figure 2. This is because they have lower priced cattle and export a wider range of cuts, not all of which are from the highest valued parts of the carcase. Based on the first four months of this year, they are on target for the highest ever value at just under $6,000 (€5,172) per tonne despite record volumes being exported.

Australian beef is also considered a premium product in international beef markets. They have high value steak meat markets in Asia and increasingly in the UK alongside a strong market in the US for forequarter manufacturing type beef.

The values they have achieved this decade are higher than Brazil but below the US though the upward trend has been similar as we can see in Figure 3.

In the 2021-22 exporting year which runs from July 1 to June 30 the following year, the average value was Aus$ 8,571 (€5,226) per tonne increasing to Aus$11,648 (€7,102) per tonne.

Trade policy impact

There has traditionally been a large disparity in cattle prices between Ireland, EU countries and the UK and the major beef exporting countries in the Southern Hemisphere. Beef production in Australia, New Zealand, North and South America is on a much larger scale and in many cases with climate conditions that enable a year-round growing season.

These countries also have access to the use of growth promoting hormones which further increases the efficiency of production.

Europe bans the use of hormones and excludes beef from cattle that have been fed hormones from imports. There has historically been a considerable tariff trade barrier against beef imports but this has been reduced by both EU and UK trade deals in recent times.

This makes both markets more attractive to the large beef exporting countries, although US beef is under represented in European imports because the industry there tends to prioritise access to the use of hormones in production ahead of access to the European market.

South American countries plus Australia and New Zealand have a large grass-based element to their beef industries which are ideally placed to service the markets that exclude beef from hormone treated cattle.

2025 looks like price bubble

While the reported price for an Irish R3 steer price is €1.13 per kilo less than it was this time last year, it should however be noted that it is still around €1.20 per kilo higher than it was in June 2024.

There was particularly intense competition between Irish factories for cattle in the first half of 2025 when markets for beef were also strong. It was only in the second half of the year that numbers tightened and this kept farm gate prices at the higher level. By the end of the year, 200,000 fewer cattle were processed than the year before and so far in 2026, cattle numbers are down by over 77,000 head or almost 10% on the same period last year.

Cattle prices increased at an unprecedented rate to record levels in the first few months of last year and stayed at the higher levels for most of the rest of the year

Bearing in mind that most of last year’s drop in numbers occurred in the second half of the year, this comparison is somewhat misleading and Bord Bia’s forecast is for cattle numbers overall to be broadly similar this year to last year.

While there was aggressive competition between factories for cattle supplies throughout most of 2025, this hasn’t been the case so far this year, suggesting that factories have adjusted their business model to operate with less cattle but sourced at a lower price.

Cattle prices increased at an unprecedented rate to record levels in the first few months of last year and stayed at the higher levels for most of the rest of the year. While prices have fallen back from these heights, they remain ahead of where they were two years ago, suggesting that 2025 prices were something of a bubble.

Comment

The natural rule of relatively open trading economies is that goods will move from where they can be produced cheapest to the highest value markets. That means producers in these higher value markets have their prices squeezed by competition from imports.

Both UK and EU beef import data over the past year shows a significant increase in beef imports from South American countries, Australia and New Zealand.

Access to the high-value European markets alongside particularly strong demand from the US for imported beef has the effect of lifting the value of their exports but they still remain competitively priced compared with Irish and wider EU production.