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.

Click here to see more...

Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER AND GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to hit 10,000 subscribers, and when we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn. Sign up for exclusive access to tickets and details.