Ron Plain and Scott Brown
University of Missouri
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Year-over-year pork imports were up 9.7% in November. During the first 11 months of 2014, U.S. pork imports are up 12.5%. U.S. pork exports were down 19.8% in November compared to 12 months earlier with a decline in shipments to all major foreign buyers except South Korea. January-November pork exports were down 1.7%. During November, 19.3% of U.S. pork production was exported while imports equaled 4.7% of production.
Hog imports totaled 377,680 head during November, down 4.8% from a year earlier. Through November, hog imports were down 0.9% compare to 2013.
Employers added 252,000 to the economy during December and the unemployment rate fell to 5.6%. That should be good news for meat demand.
Friday morning’s pork cutout value was $83.23/cwt FOB the plants, down 54 cents from the week before, but up 62 cents from a year ago. Belly and loin prices were higher this week. Ham prices were lower.
Peoria had a top live price today of $49/cwt. The top price Friday for interior Missouri live hogs was $52/cwt which is down $1.50 from the previous Friday. There were no national or regional negotiated hog carcass price quotes this morning.
The national average negotiated carcass price for direct delivered hogs on the prior day report covering all day Thursday was $72.15/cwt.
Hog slaughter this week totaled 2.163 million head, up 8.3% from New Years week and up 3.5% from same week last year. Last week and this week were the only two weeks since February 22 with hog slaughter above the year-ago level. It appears that death loss from the PED virus was much lower last summer than last winter.
The average live slaughter weight of barrows and gilts in Iowa-Minnesota last week set a new record at 287.7 pounds, up 0.2 pounds from the old record set twice last spring. Last week’s weights were up 0.8 pounds from a week earlier and up 4.8 pounds from a year ago. That was the 92nd consecutive week with weights above the year-earlier level.
It was a down week for both hog and cattle futures. The February lean hog futures contract closed today at $79.02/cwt, down $2.28 for the week. April hog futures ended the week at $80.05/cwt, down $3.45 from the week before. May hogs lost $3.40 this week to close at $85.30/cwt. The June contract ended the week at $89.20/cwt.
Corn futures were higher this week. The March contract gained 5 cents this week to end at $4.0025 per bushel. May corn futures ended the week at $4.0825 and July corn settled at $4.145/bu.
Source: AGEBB