Managing risk in a livestock operation is crucial as feed and input costs continue to rise. Dr. Steve Meyer with EverAg, former Partners for Production Agriculture, says record prices have impacted producers.
“We’re in this position with near record corn prices and record soybean prices, for sure record soybean oil prices, without having a real short crop anywhere in the world. The only kind of short crop we had was the safrina corn crop in Brazil last year was not quite as good as it normally is.”
Meat demand is exceptionally strong right now in the United States. COVID did change the way consumers buy meat, especially pork.
“When they walk down through a meat case, when they actually look at the meat case, and look at the prices of things in a meat case, they discover that pork is a great value. And I think that is kind of had some changes in behavior. So, the demand side is not the problem, export demand is pretty soft, and probably going to stay that way, but domestic demand certainly looks strong.”
Meyer says pork producers should keep an eye on the futures market for opportunity.
“I always characterize the lean hog futures contract as a buyer for all of your pigs in the future. It’s sitting there offering you a price every day for pigs out into the future. And if that’s a good price and one that you can live with and make a profit, then you should think about doing that. Now, tou don’t want to leave too much money on the table, everybody says that.”
More information on the pork industry can be found at porkcheckoff.org.
