How pork production has evolved over the last 25 years

Dec 05, 2023

The following dynamic graph shows us how pork production (in millions of tons) has evolved over the last 25 years as well as the rankings by country and how these have been changing.

We observed sustained growth in China until the appearance of African swine fever in 2018 and how, after a spectacular drop, pork production has been recovering.

Regarding the ranking of the top-producing countries, we see there has been no movement for the first four places in the last 25 years if we consider the EU as a whole. We observe how Russia and Vietnam were climbing positions against Canada.

This changes when we break the EU into countries (Figure 2), where Spain made a breakthrough in 2020, becoming the main EU producer, ousting Germany, which lost 20 years of hegemony, becoming the third world producer after China and the United States, until last year when it was overtaken by Brazil.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.