Australian farmers beef up meat exports to China

Sydney

IN the restaurants of Beijing and Shanghai, patrons are asking: Where's the beef? The question is proving a boon for Australian ranchers such as Sam Burton-Taylor, who is shipping ever-larger quantities of meat to satisfy the voracious appetite of China's growing middle class.

Australian beef sales to China surged sixfold in three years to a record A$917 million (S$904 million) in 2015, data from Meat & Livestock Australia show. The volume of beef shipped to China rose more than four times over the same period while the price received for the exports has jumped 37 per cent in the past 12 months.

While earnings from meat, which totalled A$15 billion last year, are not about to eclipse those from iron ore, the export boom signals that Australia is successfully transitioning away from mining. Just as a sharp increase in demand from China for iron ore pushed up prices for the metal to a peak …