The business magazine of the pork industry for over 50 years, National Hog Farmer’s award-winning editorial provides professional pork producers with breaking news, business management guidance, and timely production information needed to keep modern pork production systems competitive and profitable.
At what point do we punt the December Hogs and Pigs Report? That is the question that is weighing on the minds of both market analysts and producers as hog slaughter numbers remain far below expected levels and weights show no signs of "backed up" hogs. I realize there are performance issues, so let's discuss the report, what it suggested for this spring, and the forces that could be driving numbers in various directions.
Friday's Cold Storage report was not wildly bullish, but was certainly good news regarding the status of frozen meat and poultry inventories. Stocks for every species were well below year-ago levels and lower than the already-low levels reported in the December report. Data for all meat and poultry species appears in Table 1 and the monthly species totals are shown in Figure 1 to provide a historical perspective.
