An economic constant is that as productivity climbs, the cost of goods tends to fall. That trend is at work in most agricultural commodities, including beef, albeit with complicating factors.

For instance, flat real returns to beef producers across the past two decades are in contrast to significant climbs in returns to lamb and mutton producers.

The confounding factor here, Mr Weeks said, is that sheepmeat production has traditionally been a by-product of wool production, which has been in decline, leading to a fall in sheep flock numbers in key sheepmeat-eating regions including Europe and North America.

Falling flock numbers have contributed to restricted meat supply and a lift in prices.

An exception is China, which consumes all its own sheepmeat output.

Some grains have also recently been bucking the trend, but largely because of the distorting effect of grain ethanol, Mr Weeks said.

The charge that levy money has done nothing to stop falling consumption of beef also misses the big picture, in his view.

Consumption fell in the 1990s, when red meat’s health and nutritional benefits were under a cloud, but in the last decade there has been a 30 per cent increase in real terms in Australian consumer expenditure on beef. “We were able to claw back some of the expenditure we lost over the previous decade.”

By comparison, Mr Weeks said, the US beef demand index fell 18 per cent over the past 20 years, with a recovery of about five per cent in the past decade.