Jim Long, President-CEO, Genesus
Inc.

U.S. Hogs and Pigs Report “Lots of Pigs!”

The USDA report of the June 1^st inventory indicates “Lots of Pigs” 4% more than a year ago. No doubt good pork demand domestically and globally will be important for maintaining profitable prices.

USDA June 1st Hogs and Pigs Report

Observations

Breeding Herd has expanded 1% over the last year. Certainly an increase but not what you would call aggressive expansion.
Market Hogs up 4%. 8% higher in the 180-pound plus category all other weight groups up 3%. This tells us we have some heavy weight hogs to clean up.
Sows farrowing last three months are no higher then a year ago.
All the Pig Crop increase has come from a major jump in litter size. It’s interesting that litter size is increasing faster then sows farrowing. Not sure why farrowing rate is not improving. Actually you could make argument it has declined. Same number of farrowing sows with larger breeder herd means farrowing rate decline.
In the last year Nebraska has been the leader in sow herd expansion up 30,000 to 450,000. No state declined in the breeding herd numbers over the last year.

How will this effect prices? Its all about China and global market access. Spain which is seeing excellent sales in China (no tariffs) has hog prices $50 U.S. per head higher then US producers. Market access and tariffs are so important to each and every exporting country.

G20

President Trump (USA) and President Xi (China) met at G20 in Japan. They have agreed to restart trade talks. President Trump indicated planned tariffs increases on Chinese goods would not proceed at this time. As we wrote earlier Spain with tariff free access to China versus USA’s 70% tariff are seeing hog prices $50 U.S. per head higher. Its obvious removal of tariffs on U.S. pork would be significantly positive for U.S. and Canada hog producers.