It has taken a while but the cost of supermarket beef has just gone down, months after cattle prices slumped from record levels last year.
The price of low-quality meat has fallen by $2/kg in the major supermarkets in the past month, but the long period of high prices has changed people's consumption habits.
Queensland butcher Robert Retallick said customers were opting for cheaper cuts of meat, such as mince, because premium beef was too expensive for many.
"Butchers are doing a lot more value-adding or creating new meals out of cheaper cuts," Mr Retallick said.
"Mince has become such a monstrous amount of meat because we can get so many meals out of a piece of mince."
Mr Retallick said premium cuts were a tough sell right now.
"The more expensive cuts aren't selling as well, so we drop the prices more to keep them moving in the market to get rid of them," he said.
He thought people would buy those expensive cuts less often.
"People will still want the experience of meat, but people might start to buy the best meat they can once a week instead of four times a week," he said.
Supply and demand
The price of beef cattle has fallen from $11 per kilogram to $7 in the past six months.
Cattle market analyst David Kent said that was to be expected as farmers re-stocked their land and Australia's herd numbers increased after the drought.
"A couple of years ago the supply wasn't there but the demand certainly was, [and] that sent prices up to record levels," Mr Kent said.
With cattle herd numbers back up now and continuing to rise, cattle prices have come off their peak, but they are still historically high.
In 2019 the Eastern Young Cattle Indicator was sitting at $5/kg, well below the current level so Mr Kent thought farmers were still making money.
"They are reasonable prices at the moment, nothing like what they were three or four years ago, so if you are producing good quality cattle to the right market specifications you are still receiving fairly good money," he said.
Farmer wants middle ground for prices
NSW central west cattle producer Christie Fuller wants cattle prices to settle somewhere in the middle, so both farmers and consumers are the winners.
Too high and the meat processing sector struggles to make money, meat prices rise in the supermarket, and consumers shy away.
But if prices fell too low, farmers would not be able to make a decent living.
"They were getting exorbitant for most of the commercial industry," she said.
"Hopefully, it just flattens out and we just get that happy consumer base with even supply and demand and it's just an even playing field for everyone and we will be OK."
El Niño could change things again
The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted a 50 per cent chance of El Niño developing later in the year.
An El Niño can produce drier conditions, which can push up costs for farmers if they have to buy in feed, but could also push the price of cattle down if they are forced to sell and there is an oversupply in the saleyards.
The El Niño watch influenced how Ms Fuller managed her herd of 1,200 head at her Cowra property.
"We have made the most of the rain and have planted a lot of early feed for winter, so we will just see how that pans out," she said.
Meat prices falling but don't hold your breath
While consumers might want to pay less for beef, even the person in the middle needs to make some money.
David Kent said butchers paid a lot of money to keep stocking their shops during the drought years and the period after when supply was very tight, and their margins were affected.
Now that cattle prices had dropped, he thought butchers would slowly reduce the cost of the meat they sold.
"Butchers and wholesalers were paying those high prices for the stock and they had to cover a lot of costs back then, so that will come down as they pay less for the commodity," he said.
