By Tammi Jonas, AFSA Focal Point for Farmers

When someone says ‘we need export,’ who are ‘we’?

The truth is, exporters need export. Among them are some of Australia’s largest meat processors, such as multi-billion-dollar multinationals like JBS and Teys. The influential peak bodies, including Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and the National Farmers Federation (NFF), are overwhelmingly representatives of the big players, often pretending to be the voices of everyday farmers. These key actors have succeeded in growing Australia’s beef exports to around 70% of what is produced up from just 17% in the 1950s.

A staggering 70% of Australian beef exported to the United States ends up in McDonald’s, Burger King, and Carl’s Jr hamburgers. These exports do not prioritise the interests of the Australian nor the American public; instead, they contribute to rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the U.S. Meanwhile, the bulk of the remaining beef exports are aimed at affluent Asian and Middle Eastern markets. We are not ‘feeding the world,’ multinationals are feeding their profits at the expense of farmers and eaters here and everywhere.

Governments promote export because it aligns with their electoral success and a misguided focus on GDP as a measure of prosperity. In Australia, an extensive government apparatus is in fact dedicated to expanding export markets—not only in agriculture, but also in other extractive sectors like iron ore, coal, natural gas, and gold, where export volumes far surpass those of beef. Through their diplomatic work to open up more markets and ease trade barriers, the government is literally working for the multinationals. Maybe those multinationals should pay their salaries – or do they already?

The Labor Government’s promise to deliver a food security strategy if re-elected is an opportunity for a national conversation about the negative impact of export focus on local food security. The Government says that ‘Through the strategy, we will identify opportunities to improve supply chain resilience, with the goal of minimising price volatility and costs at the checkout.’ To do this, they will have to address multinational control of our supply chains that is driving price volatility for farmers and higher prices at the checkout.

The truth is that when we send our meat overseas, we export more than just product; we export our power. By prioritising the demands of global markets and multinational corporations, we have sacrificed the interests of everyday Australians. Small and local abattoirs, which are vital for farmers who sell meat into sustainable local economies, are disappearing at an alarming rate. Instead of supporting these essential community infrastructures, our policymakers have allowed them to be sold off to foreign interests, leaving many farmers with no local options for processing their livestock.

The vast majority of livestock farmers in Australia sell into commodity markets with no control over the prices they receive for their efforts. Export markets play a huge part in the price volatility that means farmers do not know what their animals are worth when they wake up on any given day – it’s up to the global market and whatever drivel Trump blurts on social media, or which war is affecting inputs and market access for the exporters. If export demand goes down, so do prices for farmers who sell to the exporters via the saleyards or meatworks, where a steadily diminishing number of corporate buyers are accused of collusion and price fixing. So it is not that export is ‘good for everyday farmers,’ it is that their lack of agency is tied to what is good for exporters – the entire system is bad for farmers.

As access to local abattoirs diminishes for farmers who feed local communities, organisations like the MLA and the Red Meat Advisory Council are actually celebrating the recent growth in processing capacity to increase export volumes. There are more livestock being processed than ever before, by fewer abattoirs to serve corporate profits, at the expense of everyday farmers who can no longer access the big abattoirs.

The problem is not only damaging livelihoods, it is gambling with public health. The factory farms increasingly feeding the export (and domestic) markets are giant viral toilets. The overcrowding of animals creates optimal conditions for viruses to swap genes, potentially leading to new and dangerous threats that can spill over to humans. As evolutionary epidemiologist and author of Big Farms Make Big Flu Rob Wallace says, in the course of industrialising agriculture, we industrialised its pathogens. The diseases that evolve in intensive herds and flocks are deadlier and more infectious.

Why would we intentionally WANT a food system where you can poison a majority of the population, by accident or intent, by hitting one or two points in the supply chain; where a fire, attack, flooding, or other disaster can shut down the supply chain for millions in one swoop, where one sick animal’s germs can spread to almost everyone’s plate across a region because we ground them up alongside countless thousands of others and created a mass reproduction event for pathogens that otherwise could have been isolated?

Beyond beef, the concerning trend towards consolidation is evident in other agricultural sectors as well, including dairy, which now sees 80% of its processing under the control of foreign multinationals. We have effectively lost control of our processing capacity, as the Australian Government has facilitated the sell-off of our facilities, undermining food security.

This situation is mirrored in the gas industry, which exports 80% of our natural gas; we do not have a gas shortage, but instead, multinationals profit from exporting it at higher prices than they get domestically. If this trajectory continues, we risk facing a similar fate with our meat supply.

Without decisive action to maintain and protect our domestic processing capacities, we face the alarming prospect of having limited access to meat in our own markets, because the farmers will be gone. In contrast to the sickness endemic to the industrial capitalist model, small abattoirs have a critical role to play in a healthy food system.

Listen up, government!

The narrative that ‘we need export’ obscures the very real implications for everyday people. Local meat means safer meat. Short transport distances mean less stress on animals, less mixing of herds, and less chance for disease spread.

It is essential to prioritise local production and processing that guarantee food safety, empower our communities, and put public health before multinational profits.