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Vol. 12, No. 69 / April 12, 2013
As a larger share of US meat production goes to other metric ton
Flow of US Beef Into Mexico, 3-Month Moving Avg.
prod. wt.
markets, the pace of export and import shipments becomes Data presents flow into Mexico as seen from US export Data and Mexico Import Statistics
a critical demand driver. The official statistics for US beef,
20,000
pork and poultry exports are released each month by the US Cen- 18,000
sus Bureau. The Census data collection is consistent with the 16,000
Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System which is FAS Weekly
14,000
used by most countries. USDA reports the Census statistics as
they are released through its GATS interface and it also reports 12,000 Mexico Imports
them on a carcass weight basis, using specified conversion factors. 10,000
The reason for converting to a carcass weight equivalent is so as to 8,000
US Census (official)
make them comparable with the production statistics which are
reported on a carcass weight basis. The monthly statistics are 6,000
reported with a significant lag (consider the amount of data Cen- 4,000
sus needs to process). For instance, February export statistics 2,000
were released on April 5 and the March report will be released
May 2. -
In addition to the monthly export statistics, we also get 2010 2011 2012 2013
an early read of export numbers for fresh/frozen beef cuts metric ton
US Exports of Fresh/Frozen Beef, MT, Shipped Basis
and, more recently, pork through USDA’s Export Sales Re- shipped wt.
Comparison of Monthly Official Census Data and Weekly USDA Export Statistics
porting system (ESR). The weekly report is normally thought 90,000
to be more volatile, given how the various companies that report Weekly Report Monthly Report
into the system, submit their data. Also, the weekly export data 80,000
tabulated on a monthly basis are not expected to be exactly the
same as what the Census reports given differences in coverage
70,000
and compliance rate. Still, the expectation is for the numbers,
over time, to consistently match, if not in actual volumes, in the
general trend. We have often reported on the weekly export sales 60,000
for beef, considering them an early indication of what the final
official export data was likely to say. In recent months, however, 50,000
that parallel between the weekly and monthly numbers has
become increasingly more difficult to make. We do not claim 40,000
to be specialists in this field and among our readers there are
some that are far more qualified to address this issue. However,
we think it is appropriate to at least flag this issue. 30,000
Consider the first chart to the right. It outlines the trend 2010 2011 2012 2013
in US beef flow into Mexico, one of our most important beef trad-
ing partners. You can look at the flow from the Mexico side, which year, the weekly export report had US exports up 19% while the
is Mexico imports of US beef or you can look at it as US beef ex- US Census export statistics showed a 36% decline. The second
ports, using either the weekly export data or the monthly export chart compares the monthly official statistics on US fresh/frozen
data (Aside: We converted the weekly export numbers by calculat- beef exports (red bars) vs. the implied monthly exports using the
ing the average daily shipments and then totaling the daily aver- weekly system (light green). The relationship between these two
ages into a monthly number). The chart above shows a dramati- statistics has dramatically changed since 2012 and the only thing
cally different picture depending on what kind of data you we can think of is the change in Harmonized System codes that
are using. Due to the month to month variability, we used a 3- went into effect...January 2012. We welcome any other insights
month average to smooth it out. In January, the three month av- but, in the meantime, note the growing discrepancy when reading/
erage Mexico imports of US beef were up 3% from the previous analyzing the monthly and weekly export statistics.
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