News

Hogs and Pigs bearish for producers

A livestock market analyst says the USDA’s Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report didn’t have a lot of great news for the nation’s hog producers.

Scott Brown with the University of Missouri says the report shows a couple of big negatives for pork producers.

Not only are there more breeding animals on hand than there were a year ago – but what he says is more troubling – is the number of pigs when it comes down to weight categories.  “We fell outside of the range of pre-report estimates,” he says.  “It looks like to me right now, we’ve got close to 300,000 more pigs that are going to come to slaughter in the last quarter of 2016.”

He tells Brownfield adding 300,000 more pigs to already large kill numbers isn’t good for the nation’s pork producers.  “It only puts more stress on what we have to get through in that last quarter of 2016,” he says.  “We can think about lower prices coming ahead – and much lower prices if we’re not careful as we really stress the packing capacity that we have.

Brown says producers aren’t on the right side of the supply/demand chain – and prices could continue to drop even further.