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Minnesota pig farmer looking for hog market stability

A pig farmer from southern Minnesota says he’d like to see more stability in the hog market.

Brad Kluver of Northfield tells Brownfield 2023 was a very challenging year for pork producers.

“It’s that light at the end of the tunnel, it’s kind of like ‘well we’re almost there. We keep waiting for that gap in hogs (and) we all expected this year to be a lot more of a bumper crop-type year when we looked at what the prices could do, and there’s absolutely been opportunities to risk manage and to lock in and secure some profit.”

But he says those risk-management windows don’t seem to last very long.

“And its fallen apart a lot faster than we thought it would, so we’ve seen some exodus in the industry and we’re going to continue to see that. We’re going to continue to see sows liquidate and the market potentially contract a little bit.”

He says while contraction could help improve prices, it doesn’t feel natural to root for hog farmers going out of business to try to remain profitable.

Brownfield interviewed Kluver during last week’s Minnesota Farmfest in Redwood County.