🇺🇾 The cattle breeds of Uruguay

Uruguay's cattle are beef animals raised on grass across the old ranches, the estancias, that once made the country feel like a single estate. Beef remains central to the farm trade, marketed as natural, grass-fed meat, and the old ranches now draw visitors seeking country life.

• In 2018 Uruguay produced 589,000 tons of beef.
• An old saying summed the country up as 'the cow and the port'.
• Agriculture provides about 10% of GDP and is the top foreign exchange earner.
• Cattle are raised on grass and sold under the Uruguay Natural brand.
• Estancia tourism invites guests onto golden-era ranches.

Cattle in Uruguay

Cattle sit at the heart of Uruguayan farming. In the first half of the twentieth century people spoke of the whole country as if it were one vast estancia, the local word for a ranch, with Montevideo as its head office, and an old saying summed the economy up as a cow and a port. Beef still anchors the farm trade: agriculture brings in about a tenth of national output and is the main earner of foreign exchange, which puts Uruguay alongside Brazil, Canada and New Zealand as an exporter of farm goods. Keeping is extensive and low in labour, technology and capital, giving smaller yields per hectare but letting the country sell its meat as natural.

Milk, butter and beef

Beef leads the list. Uruguay produced 589,000 tons of it in 2018 and counts as a major meat producer. For generations beef, with wool from sheep, carried the export trade; when world prices for both slumped in the 1950s, the country's golden era ended. Marketing schemes such as Uruguayan grass-fed beef and Uruguay Natural now seek premium standing for the meat, alongside wine and other foods, by stressing how the animals are raised.

Today

Farming still supplies roughly a tenth of GDP and earns the country most of its foreign exchange, and Uruguay belongs to the Cairns Group of farm exporters. The beef trade leans on a natural, grass-fed image rather than on intensive methods, and old ranches have found a second life hosting tourists. Annual beef output stood at 589,000 tons in 2018.