Market confidence rears its ugly head despite red hot beef exports

Last week, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries (DAFF) released the March 2026 monthly beef export figures. For the month, exports hit 149,973 metric tons, the second highest monthly volume on record, and only 462 mt behind the all time record set in July 2025. 

Some highlights from the March results are as follows:

• Record monthly exports to South Korea – 25,543mt
• Record exports to Thailand
• Third highest monthly volumes on record to China – 32,907mt
  • Against the backdrop of exporters rushing to get product landed prior to quota being hit.
• Japan volumes up 28% year-on-year
• UK exports up nearly 200% year-on-year
• US exports up 30% on March 2025 volumes
• Vietnamese exports up 60% year-on-year

Alongside this, if adjusted to include entire processing system, Australia is having weekly records broken of both slaughter numbers and beef production – indicating that large supplies of cattle are being handled by the supply chain.

Despite this positivity seen in large volumes of product being moved overseas and domestically buyers handling large cattle supplies, we’ve had a timely reminder in the past 10 days of how significant the influence producer emotion has on cattle prices.

In this column, only two weeks ago, I discussed the levels of uncertainty in the cattle markets being at their highest levels since the pandemic.

Acknowledging that surging input prices (fuel and urea), coupled with dry to drought conditions across key cattle regions are very real, the broader market is looking past fundamentals currently and trading with emotion.

We’ve seen the impacts rapidly declining producer confidence can have on market performance, think 2023 and also in 2022 when Foot and Mouth disease was located in Bali.

The fundamentals for a generally positive outlook remain soundly intact for the beef industry, but what the past 10 days has shown, is that markets can very quickly forget trading fundamentals and work off headlines and emotion. Price volatility has again rapidly intensified because of this.

What does it mean?

It’s important not to forget the fundamentals of both the current situation and the outlook for the beef industry despite this sharp downturn in pricing.

And just as importantly, it’s a clear reminder of the influence producer and market emotion can have on price performance. When viewed across other commodity and equities markets around the world, they are experiencing similar examples of this so it's not isolated to Australian livestock markets.

The rise and influence of emotion on markets has intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic and looks set to act as a cornerstone of market influences into the future.

The Bottom Line

• Near record setting monthly beef export volumes for March are a positive showing of global appetite for Australian beef.
• Producer and market emotion has exerted significant influence on this price move seen in the past 10 days.
• Fundamentals for the beef sector remain soundly intact.

Ripley Atkinson's experience in the red meat industry and current role at StoneX developing price risk management tools for Australia’s sheep and cattle sectors ensures he delivers unique, whole of supply chain insights and analysis across key factors such as prices, supply, production and the drivers of the sheep and cattle cycles.

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