Good news for the porks 🏅

The North American hog sector has started to shift away from the seasonal tight hog supplies of summer as numbers have started ramping up – and matching last year’s. So the Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services advises pork producers to lock in their feed costs as they forward contracts for hog production. So here’s what you should take into consideration:

• Pork demand in North America remains the main factor influencing pork prices.
• China has had a diminished effect on that same demand when compared to the domestic market.
• The weaker Canadian dollar has helped support the US market, but it’s also impacting the cost of hog production.

So it’s believed that there are some pretty good opportunities for solid pricing, but producers should be careful with feed purchases. 

• The risk lies in the feeding margin: the value of the feed ingredients that a producer needs relative to the value of the hogs that they sell.
• Thankfully, it seems that pork is performing well in this inflationary economy and will continue to do so over the next four or five months.