Forecasting The Number of Monthly Slaughtered Hanwoo based on Sex Ratio at Birth and Holiday Season

Abstract

The number of Korean native cattle, Hanwoo, has exceeded 3.5 million, the historical largest one, in May 2022. As a result, the Hanwoo industry are in a state of oversupply and are concerned about the risk of a price collapse. The main objective of this study is to develop medium- and long-term forecasting models for monthly Hanwoo supply as a way to reduce the risk of imbalance between supply and demand. To construct the forecasting models, the empirical histogram of the month-specific rate for Hanwoo is applied. The monthly data of Hanwoo in 2014-2022 are obtained from the Animal Product Traceability System in Korea. The results are as follows: A forecasting model for the number of monthly Hanwoo at 6-month-old with considering the birth sex ratio outperforms the other models. Also, adjusting the slaughter rate based on holiday season made the forecast more accurate. The forecasting models were evaluated based on multiple accuracy measures such as mean absolute percentage error(MAPE) and root mean square percentage error (RMSPE). The MAPE for the monthly slaughtered Hanwoo females and males were 9.37% and 8.98%, respectively. Therefore, the forecasting model developed in this study is expected to be useful as a tool to reduce the risk faced by those in the Hanwoo industry.