Higher prices for beef and a recovery in the size of Brazil's herd should push up unprocessed exports in 2011 by 25 percent to 2 million tonnes, the national farming confederation, CNA, said.

Antenor Nogueira, president of a CNA forum for beef, said Brazil's beef cattle herd was expanding again after a few years of depressed prices that prompted many livestock farmers to speed up slaughter.

Brazil, already the world's top beef exporter, has an opportunity to seize upon higher beef prices, Nogueira said, noting that some key producing nations still have a way to go in the three to four years it takes to grow herds.

"Today there is a reduction in the production from Argentina and Australia and in the European Union. Brazil, with the herd it has, is in a very special position to be able to serve that market," Nogueira said.

Brazil's herd grew 1.5 percent to 205.3 million head in 2009, according to the most recent data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The beef sector has an annual turnover of around 50 billion reais ($30 billion).

Live cattle futures on Sao Paulo's BM&F commodities exchange for delivery this month were trading at their highest since at least 1999, at 103.45 reais 15-kg arroba.

Argentina, another major global meat supplier, saw exports fall more than 50 percent in 2010 after farmers reduced their herds to free up land for more profitable grain production, putting further pressure on reduced global beef supplies.

CNA representatives said Brazil needed to go on a marketing offensive to improve the image of its produce which had suffered in the last few years.

Until 2007, Brazil was the biggest supplier of beef to the European Union, but lost most of this market due to EU demands for increased traceability of food products. Brazil says the E.U. discriminates unfairly with "absurd demands" and the country is preparing to challenge EU restrictions on its beef through the World Trade Organization

"The EU represented 27 percent of our exports in 2006/07, and now it is 5 percent," said Nogueira.

He said increased domestic meat consumption in a growing economy was helping offset this, as was increased shipments to Arab nations. Most of Brazil's beef production is consumed locally, around 80 percent in 2009, CNA data showed. (Reuters)