By Pete Hisey
CATTLE NETWORK
12/12/2006
While corn and soybean prices soar on the global market, costs have remained low and supplies high in Brazil, where the country is establishing new feedlots to feed an international demand for fattier, more flavorful grain-fed beef.
Despite outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, the country's booming export sales have barely slowed, and although only a tenth of Brazil's cattle move through feedlots before slaughter, feedlot capacity is growing at 20 percent per year, according to Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Brazil's less expensive grass-fed beef continues to be popular in more than a hundred markets worldwide, but an increase in grain-fed cattle would allow the country to compete head-to-head with the United States, Canada and Australia in the higher margin grain-fed cattle business.
