Chinese Purchases of U.S. Pork Boost Live Hog Values in Canada

Farmscape for October 22, 2019

The Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services says the increased movement of U.S. pork into China is good news for American and Canadian pork producers.
China's suspension of punitive tariffs on U.S. pork has sparked a recent increase in Chinese purchases of American pork.
Tyler Fulton, the Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services, observes the futures markets have started to see some support.

Clip-Tyler Fulton-HAMS Marketing Services:
For really more than a year now we've kind of been waiting just to find out whether we would see some increased exports and it was not so much a question of if as much as when those orders would start to show up.
It appears fairly consistently now for three even four weeks straight we've seen a steady flow of orders for pork from China from the United States and at volumes that are significant and it appears that they tend to be growing in numbers.
Because our market in Canada uses U.S. pricing points, when the American producers are benefitting from increased pork exports it actually benefits Canadian producers as well.
We are a fully integrated market.
There's not a ton of live animals that move back and forth anymore, market hogs that move back and forth across that border but we really are an integrated market and, when there are increased exports from the United States overseas, that's equivalent or in some ways even better for the short term for Canadian producers that will see a benefit from higher prices.

Fulton says the futures have seen roughly about a five to ten percent move over the last week or so.
He acknowledges the Chinese pork orders may be contingent on the  completion of what's being called the mini-deal with China but this comes when a lot of this pork needs to be moving from North America to, in particular, China.
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Bruce Cochrane.


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