By Bruce Cochrane
The Director of Risk management with h@ms Marketing Services says consumer demand for pork, both domestically and on the export market, will play a key role in influencing live hog prices this fall and winter.
The typical seasonal decline in live hog prices has kicked in, fueled by increased hog numbers and improved productivity due to cooler weather.
Tyler Fulton, the Director of Risk Management with h@ms Marketing Services says, in addition to that, there's demand pressures created by a significant increase in competing meats like beef, chicken and turkey.
Tyler Fulton-h@ms Marketing Services:
We really have to figure out a way to increase consumption but to do so without requiring significant price discounts.
That's the key to demand.
We can expect that domestic consumers will choose pork over other alternatives with significant price declines but we want to avoid that.
What there has been evidence of is some declines this past spring in demand which is something we haven't seen for quite some time and it's a little bit concerning.
I think that might be in part due to the massive price decline that we saw in beef and how that may have affected consumer decision making in the grocery store.
No doubt we're relying on largely the domestic consumer to buy more pork and to consume more pork and it sure would be a huge help if we could see an increase in pork exports as well but, there again, it's largely a function of price.
Fulton says, the lower the price for pork goes, the more of an incentive there is for both domestic and export consumers to choose pork over alternatives.
Source: Farmscape