Vegetarian India is the Word's Biggest Exporter of Bovine Meat .... and has endemic FMD

Vegetarian India is the World's Biggest Exporter of Bovine Meat !

Global trade produces some of the most intriguing and often unexpected results. But they are only strange if you don’t understand the details of the particular commodity. For example, the world’s biggest exporter of green coffee is Germany which does so without a coffee plant for 5,000 km in any direction from Frankfurt .It exports more green coffee than all of Africa put together. Botswana exports boats from Maun in the Kalahari Desert and India regularly exports four times as much Darjeeling tea as it 87 registered plantations produces. Butperhaps  the oddest outcome I have seen in international trade is fact that largely Hindu and vegetarian  India is now the now the world’s biggest exporter of  bovine meat, bigger than Australia, US and Brazil. In 2015 India exported some 2 million tonnes of bovine meat and yet  has had endemic Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) which has played havoc with African exporters and confined many of them to local markets.

Germany exports more coffee than all of Africa because of its superb logistics to other countries in Europe. German transnational companies dominate the  European trade in beans used for making expresso. But coffee beans have a limited shelf life and therefore they need to be moved quickly to their final consumer. Germany is well located to do this for virtually everyone in Europe. Until Africa improves its logistics hubs beneficiation of coffee will remain just a dream.

Botswana exports aluminum boats to Mozambique and Namibia from the Kalahari because they have developed expertise in boats that manage hippos, crocodiles and logson the Okavango river. Mozambique, which is Africa’s biggest producer of aluminum makes no boats and does not even export the aluminum to Botswana, that comes from SA. SA boats are fiberglass and meant for rich people to play with on the beach and have little hope of surviving a collision with an unhappy hippo on one of Africa’s rivers

The reason why four times more Darjeeling tea is exported from India than is produced  is simple enough- its normally called commercial fraud. India also exports bovine animals but not beef.  The export is principallyof  buffalomeat which has a huge chunk of the bottom end of the meat  market in Asia and the Middle East. It is particularly popular in countries like Vietnam and the Gulf states which is not surprising given that the cost of deboned buffalo is US$3 per kilo in 2016, far below that of imported Australian beef which exports for about US$4.40 per kilo .

That a largely vegetarian country like India which reveres cows is the world’s biggest exporter of bovine meat is, like German coffee and Botswana boats,  not as surprising as it first seems. The fact that most Indians are vegetarians creates a far bigger exportable surplus than would otherwise be the case and moreover, buffalos are not revered like cows amongst  Hindus in India. Buffalo are needed as a very important part of India’s huge dairy industry and so being the world’s largest exporter of buffalo meat should not be surprising

What really is truly surprising from an African perspective is the fact that India has endemic FMD and yet is still the world’s biggest exporter of bovine meat.  From the perspective of the Ehiopian and Ugandan cattle herder as well as from Namibia and Botswana’s relatively  developed cattle industry this sounds very strange indeed. If you have FMD in your area the European Union and the US, our two main markets, simply block your exports. The EU in particular imposes absurd obligations on beef from Botswana and Namibia. Not only does the beef have to certified as coming from  FMD free areas it also has to deboned to make doubly sure that it is FMD free.

Countries like Ethiopia and Uganda where there is little effective management of the FMD are completely blocked from international trade. If you want to know just how damaging it is to be excluded from international trade in beef then ask the cattle farmers of the Caprivi strip in Namibia or in Ngamilandin Botswana.

There are perfectly legal ways of getting over the existence of FMD as a block to international trade but they are not used in Africa. It is called commodity based trade  under the terms of the OIE’s code allows countries to export  bovine beef from FMD areas as long as it is deboned,matured and has an appropriate PH level and the cattle do not actually have FMD. All this is well known and used by the Indians to develop export markets for its surplus buffalo. Namibia has been developing an extensive program in the Zambezi region (Caprivi). Botswana has done virtually nothing,

The  Chinese, hot on the heels of the Europeans and Americans,  take issue with India’s endemic FMD and have in 2014 blocked exports of Indian  buffalo meat but, given their  preference for cheap meat,  the Chinese have had no qualms about importing it from Vietnam which in turn brings in the meat from India. This so-called ‘grey market’ trade continues to be mutually beneficial and the Chinese have done nothing to stop it  but India has implied that if the block is continues it might consider taking the matter to the WTO. A WTO dispute on the Chinese regulations would be extremely valuable to Africa

There is nothing stopping African countries from developing their own protocol on commodity based trade fromFMD areas but they will not because those with developed  industries such as Botswana Namibia and South Africa desperately fear the implications of allowing imports from the massive herds of Ethiopia and Uganda, let alone buffalo meat from India,  and hence prefer to deal with the EU FMD measures. Commodity based trade, if it is to succeed,  will need to deal with the  relative lack of competitiveness of Southern African industry. 

These are the views of Professor Roman Grynberg and not necessarily UNAM where he is employed.