A few months ago I wrote a blog post about some of the misconceptions surrounding the ban on live cattle exports.  My main point was that neither the supportors of the ban nor its opposition seemed to have any understanding of the welfare implications of live exports to Indonesia.  My general point was that live cattle exports resulted in cheaper beef prices, particularly in urban centres.  The benefits of this would flow to urban, middle class consumers, while domestic beef producers would be worse off.  Livestock producers in developing countries like Indonesia tend to be smallholder farmers and typically very poor.

I made some references to international literature, but have now come across some Indonesia-specific work.  In 2002 the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) published Improving Indonesia’s Beef Industry, which reinforces my points.  It found that the Indonesian beef industry should develop in a way that:

• Improves the incomes of smallholder producers.
• Encourages a sustainable and efficient domestic production capacity.
• Satisfies the growing demands of Indonesia’s consumers for beef in ways that improve the overall performance of the economy

Clearly these points suggest a move away from live exports and towards strengthening local, smallholder production which “accounts for over 80% of beef production…[but is] seriously constrained by low [productivity].”  Smallholder incomes are constrained by “very high trader margin in facilitating the flow of [domestic] cattle from farm through to processing and final consumption”.  As I suspected, most live export cattle is consumed by urban, middle class supermarket shoppers:

The structure of beef sales differs between outlets. Wet markets still dominate sales of beef, but supermarkets sell most imported beef and beef from imported cattle.

The ACIAR report is no anti-live exports publication.  It considers that:

Imported feeder cattle are essential for the Indonesian beef industry to provide it with enough flexibility to rapidly expand production.

The report doesn’t discuss the welfare trade offs of live exports and smallholder production, an area I’d like to research more.  It does, however, provide some sophistication – admittedly 10 years old – in the discussion about the Aus-Indo beef trade.  Such sophistication has been sorely lacking in media analysis this year.