Farmscape for October 2, 2012

An agricultural economist with the University of Missouri reports U.S. pork producers are responding to record high feed costs by cutting their pig numbers and by marketing hogs at lighter weights.
Drought in the U.S. is being blamed for a dramatic increase in the cost of corn which has pushed up feed prices in general severely impacting the profitability of North American pork producers.
Dr. Ron Plain, an agricultural economics professor with the University of Missouri says the feed supply is very tight in the eastern part of the United States but as you move west things do get a little better and weather conditions and crop production has also been a bit better in Canada.

Clip-Dr. Ron Plain-University of Missouri:
In the case of the hog industry, we just got the September inventory report out last week.
They say the breeding herd is down three tenths of one percent compared to a year ago.
In the previous quarter it had been up one percent so that's a pretty quick turn around.
USDA is forecasting farrowings in the next six months will be down 1.2 percent compared to a year ago so hog producers have moved fairly quickly to try to cut production numbers.
They've also been moving hogs to slaughter a bit sooner.
Obviously if you sell them seven days earlier that's seven days less feed you have to put into hogs and if you track slaughter weights it looks like a lot of producers have been trying to market hogs a bit sooner than normal this fall.
Slaughter weights have actually dropped below year ago levels at one point this fall so that's a factor I think is driven by the high feed costs and red ink that a lot of hog producers have been facing.

Dr. Plain recommends keeping a close watch on feed markets and securing feed supplies early.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council