Iowa Corn Checkoff Dollars Have Positive Return on Meat Exports

A new study recently completed by Dr. Harry Kaiser, the Gellert Family Professor of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Commodity Promotion Research Program showed that U.S. beef, pork, corn and soybean producers are receiving a solid return on their checkoff investments in the U.S. Meat Export Federation’s (USMEF) export market development programs.

The economic model showed that combined producer and USDA marketing expenditures increased U.S. red meat exports by more than 30 percent per year. According to Dr. Kaiser, the increase in exports due to export market development translated to between $46.3 million (for beef) and $85.7 million (for pork) in average annual extra net revenue to the industry, which is far higher than the average annual $27.5 million cost invested by producers and the USDA. In fact, every industry dollar invested in these programs over the past 10 years returned an average of $15 in net revenue for the pork industry and $8 to the beef industry.

The study determined that reducing export promotion and development program funding by 75 percent between 1995 and 2010 would have reduced U.S. beef exports by 36.1 percent and U.S. pork exports by 30.1 percent, a total export loss equal to almost 537 million pounds per year for the eight top foreign markets analyzed in the model.

These results suggest that U.S. export promotion have a very important impact on import demand for U.S. beef and pork. In comparing the results of this study to those of 16 studies of similar programs for other commodities, Dr. Kaiser noted that the results of the study suggested that U.S. beef and pork export promotion has had a larger impact on imports of U.S. meat than most other export promotion programs.

The full reportis available online at http://www.usmef.org/downloads/USMEFReportFinal-Kaiser.pdf