The beef industry has grown over the past 35 years or so because population growth has meant more people to eat beef, albeit less of it individually. As a result, total pounds of beef produced and consumed has grown with the beef production gurus growing more beef per animal for a mawing population. As an example, the average carcass weight has increased from about 700 pounds in 1988 to over 900 pounds in 2023, nearly a 30% increase.

But is this continual beef production growth jeopardized by a forecasted human population growth leveling? Maybe, as sources forecast a capping of population growth in the not-too-distant future. And then, incredulously, the population declines.

In his book, Factfulness, Flatirons Books, 2018, authors Hans Rosling, et al, predict that the world’s human population will level off at about 11 billion and stabilize at this level by the end of the century.

Dr. Dean Spears, an economist at the University of Texas, predicts that the human population will not only peak at 10 billion by the year 2085, but will begin a decline replicating in reverse its steep rise over the past two centuries. A baby born in 2024 will be 60 in the 2080s, when demographers at the U.N. expect the size of humanity to peak.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington puts the peak in the 2060s. All of these predictions agree on one thing: We peak soon. And then we shrink. Humanity will not reach a plateau and then stabilize. It will begin an unprecedented decline. A population peak in the 2060s is only a short 36 years away.

To what do scientists attribute this leveling and subsequent decline in the face of the last two centuries of continual population growth? Declining fertility rates is one reason. Any worldwide average of fewer than two children per two adults means our population shrinks and eventually each new generation is smaller than the one before.

What, me worry about something that is at least 35 to 60 years hence? Yes, you, me, all of us should worry. We must plan for this forecasted reduction in population numbers as well as a reduction in our share of the collective consumer stomach from competing animal raised proteins, not to mention cell-cultivated proteins. Our biggest threats are multifaceted to include climate change, medically recommended diet reverberations and a host of other impinging factors. We cannot blithely assume that our consumers will keep eating beef in amounts that they have in the past.

These are existential threats to our collective livelihoods now, with more soon to arrive. Fairly or unfairly, we in the animal protein production business are blamed for the harmful effects of methane production, its subsequent emission into the atmosphere and that effect on global warming. We must curb the belching animal emissions of methane.

Proving beef is a nutritious protein source for humans is a constant battle for us. It will become even more so as competition ramps up with fewer mouths available. This, too, can be won by beef, as there is plenty of evidence of beef’s nutritional attributes. Our task will be to prove incorrect the “beef deniers” who bombard us with beef’s saturated fat profile causing the subsequent destruction of human health.

How could I not mention cell-cultivated beef? If you think its growth has been meteoric, which it has these last few years, it will be even more so during the years of population peaks and declines. A six-week cell-cultivated beef production cycle, without any environmental implications that we know of currently, favorably compares to the three-year cattle-to-beef production continuum.

It’s not as if we didn’t know that we had to conquer these challenges prior to any knowledge of an exigent impending consumer decline. If we want to participate in a growing business that can be passed on to our heirs, we had better recognize something we have taken for granted: Population growth, ad infinitum, will no longer be the norm.

Forewarned is forearmed. Now we can add a shrinking consumer population to the other issues we must solve. Is it worth doing? We must if we want to see our industry survive.

Population Changes and Their Effect on Beef Production

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