Winter storm disrupts hog slaughter in the US

Published Feb 27, 2023

Tridge summary

A winter storm disrupted the hog market, leading to lower slaughter numbers and potentially impacting prices. Despite higher slaughter numbers in recent months, actual hog slaughter has been similar to last year, likely due to underreporting of market hogs in a survey. This has resulted in lower hog prices, which are expected to continue to decline in 2023. Retail pork prices were down in January, and the spread between farm and retail prices was at its highest since October 2022. U.S. pork imports were up 13.9% in 2022, while exports were down 9.8%. The United States imported 95.5% of its hog imports from Canada. High feed costs are expected to continue, and Iowa State University estimates predicted a significant loss for Iowa hog farms in January.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

A strong winter storm disrupted last week's hog market. Wednesday and Thursday slaughter was far below usual. Although Saturday's slaughter was up 33% year-over-year, it appears that roughly 120,000 hogs were carried over to this week for slaughter. This could be a drag on prices for the next few days. Ron Plain Hog slaughter has been running above expectations in recent months. The heavy weight market hog inventory in USDA's December Hogs and Pigs report implied slaughter would be down 1.9% over the last 13 weeks. Actual hog slaughter has been more-or-less even with last year. The higher than predicted hog slaughter is likely due in small parts to an increase in slaughter hog imports from Canada, an increase in sow slaughter, more-current marketings evidenced by lighter slaughter weights, and adverse weather, but mostly to underreporting of market hogs in the December hog survey. A change in pork production in one direction drives hog prices in the opposite direction with the ...

Source: NationalHogFarmer