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Hog Talk – September 24, 2024
In the latest edition of the Hog Talk podcast from Ever.Ag Insights, we lay out the pre-report thoughts on this week’s Hogs and Pigs report, discuss the hog market outlook for 2025, consumer demand for pork for the winter months, and how the looming port strikes along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico could impact US pork exports.
Listen to Dr. Steve Meyer’s perspective on these topics and more.
Listen NowQuestions or comments? Topics you’d like to hear us discuss? Contact us at [email protected].
Show Transcript(Transcript auto-generated)
00;00;00;10 – 00;00;08;14
VOICEOVER
Future trading involves risk and is not suitable for all investors. Content provided in this segment is meant for educational purposes and is not a solicitation to buy or sell commodities.
00;00;08;17 – 00;00;29;28
Mike
Hello and welcome to Hog Talk, brought to you by Ever AG Insights. Each week we talk with subject matter experts on news and topics affecting the hog markets. I’m your host, Mike McGuinness. We get started today with a review of the markets. Today is Tuesday, September 24th, 2024. The lean hog contract for December up. Also most of the deferred contracts trading higher.
00;00;30;04 – 00;00;50;14
Mike
December up 15 at 75 right now on this Tuesday. But really the lean hog futures have finished higher for the sixth day in a row. And seems like we have some support there, some buyers in that hog market. And we’re going to talk in just a moment with Doctor Steve Meyer. Our guest today ever eggs senior economist. So thank you Steve for joining us today.
00;00;50;17 – 00;00;51;13
Steve
Yeah good to be with you.
00;00;51;14 – 00;00;57;18
Mike
Well let’s get your take on that strong six day streak of higher markets and the lean hog futures contract. What’s going on there.
00;00;57;18 – 00;01;16;12
Steve
Well I’d say it’s about time. I’ve been kind of a cockeyed optimist on this for some time, and I thought that we had a real chance to hold these markets together as we went through the fall. My forecast for the CME lean Hog index had been four $5 higher than the October and December futures until the last week, and they’ve kind of caught up and they’re still lower than what my forecasts are.
00;01;16;12 – 00;01;35;15
Steve
But they certainly have closed the ground on that quite a bit. And I would say are getting into the realm of reasonably priced. Now, that is not true of my forecast for 25. I mean, the futures still look to me to be significantly lower than where I think the lean hog index and most of the cash markets both cutout and spot markets, are going to be next year.
00;01;35;16 – 00;01;51;00
Steve
Now all of that could change day after tomorrow. Market hogs. Pigs are pork. But still, I would say it’s about time. And I think it’s kind of a function of, you know, I think we’ve had a lot of Missourians trading Lean Hog Future, show me it’s going to happen or I’m not going to do that. And it’s just hung in here very, very well.
00;01;51;01 – 00;02;08;10
Steve
And that value has hung in. Well, we’ve seen and we’ve seen loins perform well all year and have hung in there. The belly market has not really fallen apart at all. And so, you know, when I look at this, I’ve been expecting this to happen. So for once I kind of feel a little smug about this. But I shouldn’t get too much that way, that’s for sure.
00;02;08;11 – 00;02;11;03
Steve
Get a dose of reality pretty quick here. Humility must.
00;02;11;03 – 00;02;21;04
Mike
Prevail. Well, you mentioned the Hogs and Pigs report. It is coming out on Thursday. All indications show maybe an expansion of the hog herd. What is your take on the pre report estimates.
00;02;21;06 – 00;02;39;05
Steve
Well it says that market supplies might be up just a bit. But they’re going to be up by a smaller amount than they had been. So I would say just on the contrary I would say we’re going toward reductions in around Gerd. And this is probably going to be an intermediate report. The report estimates that I’ve seen the averages are very close to what I’m with here.
00;02;39;06 – 00;03;02;12
Steve
I mean, I’ve got the breeding herd down over 2% relative to a year ago. That’s about the same as it was in June. Not very much changed there. You had 6.8008 made and I’ve got 6.004, but that’s 2.8% lower than a year ago. And the pre report estimates are somewhere close to that. I’ve got the market herd basically unchanged just fractionally from a year ago on September 1st.
00;03;02;12 – 00;03;21;21
Steve
But again that number has been up substantially in some quarters. Recently it was up 1.5% last quarter. It was up 2.5 back in the spring. So that’s a smaller increase. And if you look at the weight categories, most of the increases in the heavies much smaller increases in the smaller pigs. So I think we’re kind of headed toward lower hog supplies going forward.
00;03;21;21 – 00;03;45;10
Steve
And when you take a lower breeding herd, and one of the things we need to realize, you know, people say, well, do you the failings or lessen this? If you look at history on this, we’re very close to kind of an asymptotic approach to the mathematical maximum on litters per breeding. And, you know, that’s governed by the length of gestation and the length of lactation and re breeding and all that, it can only go so far based on the biology of the animal.
00;03;45;10 – 00;04;05;04
Steve
And we have been just bouncing around the same kind of numbers. Not quite that good. Obviously, we’re never going to get to the mathematical maximum, but it’s been pretty steady. So if you’re going to reduce the breeding herd, you’re going to reduce farrowing. And I’ve got farrowing is down 2.6%. And of course the thing that we’ve watched the last several quarters has been this dramatic growth in pigs pay per litter.
00;04;05;04 – 00;04;28;12
Steve
And part of that was we spent three years not growing pigs per litter, which was very unusual. We’ve been going by about 1.3% per year up through 2019, and then basically flat the next three years until last September when the, you know, August pig crop came out for 2023. And then we’ve run three and 4% over and got right back to our trend growth on this last four quarters.
00;04;28;12 – 00;04;45;11
Steve
Now this quarter, though, we’re going to start comparing to a really good number last year. So the year over year change is not going to be as large. The analysts have it up 1.1%. I think that’s probably a little optimistic. I’ve only got it up 3/10 of 1% okay. So I’m not quite as optimistic. We’re going to grow litter sizes.
00;04;45;11 – 00;05;03;14
Steve
But if you’ve got 2.6% less farrowing and less than 1% growth in litter size, you’re going to have less pigs in this generous pig crop than you did a year ago. And I’ve got it down 2.4. I might be a little bit optimistic on that. As far as what the impact on markets might be next year, but still, I think we’ve moved from you know, steady.
00;05;03;14 – 00;05;19;19
Steve
She goes kind of we’ve reduced the breeding herd but we’ve increased productivity. But I think now we’re going to start seeing some reduction in pig supplies going into 25. And that’s the reason I’m relatively optimistic about 2025, especially relative to the lean hog futures are trading now.
00;05;19;19 – 00;05;36;07
Mike
Well if you are right that would be fairly friendly for this rally to continue if the hogs and pigs report comes out that way. Now corn continues to chop around a little bit. It’s up $0.28 in the last month. But does this mean heavier hogs? The question, I guess to you is what does this mean for the market this fall and winter?
00;05;36;14 – 00;05;52;22
Steve
Well, yeah, it does mean heavier hogs. And if you look compared to last year, I mean again, we have to be careful about the denominator effect here. I mean, we’ve got much heavier hogs now than we did a year ago because we had much wider hogs a year ago than we did the year before that, because feed costs were so ridiculously high last year.
00;05;52;22 – 00;06;20;17
Steve
Those costs have moderated. We’ve made these hogs bigger, and they’re going to stay bigger all the way through the fourth quarter. I’ve got weights, you know, making up for about 1% of that reduction in slaughter as we go forward. And I think that’s a reasonable number. Lower feed costs are one of the reasons for that. You know, as we reduce pig numbers, there’s especially vertically integrated operations that have their own packing, are going to have an incentive to maybe put a little weight on those pigs to try to increase, keep their poundage up their tonnage going through their plants.
00;06;20;17 – 00;06;34;17
Steve
And so, yeah, we’re going to have heavier hogs we did a year ago and heavier hogs than we did last week, because we have this seasonal increase that always happens at this time of year as temperatures cool. And as we get better tasting fresh corn into these diets and pigs just eat more.
00;06;34;22 – 00;06;48;03
Mike
Well, that means more pork. So that means to talk about the consumers. Consumers remain a little bit tentative about food purchases. At the latest retail store report that came out showed lower sales. Can pork demand overcome economic pressures?
00;06;48;09 – 00;07;02;16
Steve
Oh yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I don’t see, you know, the economic pressures aren’t nearly as great as they were a year ago because we don’t have the kind of inflation rate we had. And food prices are getting more affordable. And so the purchasing power of those dollars are getting better. We had a rate cut last week.
00;07;02;16 – 00;07;22;01
Steve
It’s going to be somewhat stimulative to the economy. That’ll reduce the amount that people have to spend on credit cards and other debt and leave some money in the deal in their pockets. So I’m guardedly optimistic. When we look at real per capita expenditure for pork, they’ve been higher May, June, July than they were a year ago. First four months of the year was down, so we’re just about dead.
00;07;22;01 – 00;07;40;04
Steve
Even with a year ago year to date on real per capita expenditures, which is a reasonable measure of where demand has been, because this is going into the last four months, five months of the year, which are the strongest consumer level demand months for pork. There’s a fallacy that that pork demand goes up when we start grilling in the summertime, and it’s just wrong.
00;07;40;04 – 00;07;58;10
Steve
Pork demand is highest in the fourth quarter because we move a lot more tonnage, and we don’t have to reduce the retail price in order to get that move. So quantity goes up, price stays the same. That means demand is higher and we’re going into that time of year. So I’m guardedly optimistic about this demand situation given macro forces that are out there.
00;07;58;10 – 00;08;17;27
Steve
My caveat on that is that exports have been a big driver this year at 9% in value so far this year. On a nominal basis, up about 6% on a real deflated basis on the value of our exports. So that’s been a big driver of demand. Now, I think we’re safe on that for this year. But the results of this election could have some real wonky things going on.
00;08;17;27 – 00;08;45;08
Steve
I mean, we can have tariffs, we can have all kinds of things happening. And so that’s kind of a question mark for 25. And beyond that we don’t have an answer for right now. But we have to recognize that the risk is out there. It’s been really good so far. If we look at combination of consumer level demand and export demand, you know, we’ve got the cutout value higher than a year ago and the quantity of pork, total quantity of pork that we’re selling higher than a year ago, well quantities up and prices up.
00;08;45;08 – 00;09;02;20
Steve
That means demand has to be. And in fact, this 2024 demand level is going to be not very far below the 21 and 22 levels that were just off the charts when we witnessed them a couple of years ago. And of course, those were driven by stimulus payments to consumers. We don’t have that in place this time. And yet we still got pretty good, man.
00;09;02;21 – 00;09;08;22
Steve
So that’s one of the reasons I’ve been pretty optimistic as we’ve gone through this summer and fall, looking forward into 25.
00;09;08;26 – 00;09;26;16
Mike
Well, you mentioned exports. East Coast and US Gulf ports accounted for 45% of waterborne U.S. pork exports in the month of July alone. There is a looming strike by longshoremen on those two ports that could threaten exports. If this actually comes to fruition. What’s the impact here, Doctor Meyer?
00;09;26;18 – 00;09;49;14
Steve
Well, it’s certainly not good. I think we do have to keep in perspective. That’s 45% of waterborne exports and 40% of our total exports never hit the water. They go to Mexico and Canada. So it’s 45% of 60%, which is about a quarter of our total pork exports move out those East Coast and Gulf ports. Now, if you shut the ports down, that product is not going out those ports.
00;09;49;18 – 00;10;02;22
Steve
The question is, can you get it out some other way? Yeah, I’m not optimistic about that, because if, you know, there’s a lot of other things can’t go out the East Coast, all of them are going to flow west and that’s going to blow things up on our West Coast ports. I think it’s just going to be a disruption.
00;10;02;22 – 00;10;23;05
Steve
The key on this is how long does it last? We had a discussion among our staff this morning. Somebody pointed out, boy, they’re a long ways apart and the demands are so great and everything. And I observed, you know, yeah. When you’re in labor negotiations, everything looks bleak until the moment that they’ve done this thing. Good, bad, bad, bad, bad and get right to the drop dead deadline and get solved.
00;10;23;06 – 00;10;42;02
Steve
You also have the possibility the Biden administration could come in and try to influence this. The question is, how long does it last? And we have to realize that, you know, 25% of our exports, that’s not some insignificant number. That’s about 6% of production. So if that starts backing up here, it certainly could have a negative impact on cutout values and on the hog market.
00;10;42;02 – 00;10;46;18
Steve
But I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it at this point other than monitor the situation.
00;10;46;18 – 00;10;52;11
Mike
Well, great points and as always, we enjoy visiting with you about all of the goings on in the pork industry. So thanks again.
00;10;52;11 – 00;10;53;24
Steve
Thank you very much, Mike. Good day.
00;10;53;25 – 00;11;10;03
Mike
Doctor Steve Meyer, ever a senior economist. Thanks, Doctor Meyer, for your insights and thank you for joining us today. If you’ve enjoyed listening to Hog Talk, be sure to tell a friend or two and subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you to the Insights Crew for their work on today’s show.
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The post Hog Talk – September 24, 2024 appeared first on .
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By Ever.Ag
5
55 ratings
In the latest edition of the Hog Talk podcast from Ever.Ag Insights, we lay out the pre-report thoughts on this week’s Hogs and Pigs report, discuss the hog market outlook for 2025, consumer demand for pork for the winter months, and how the looming port strikes along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico could impact US pork exports.
Listen to Dr. Steve Meyer’s perspective on these topics and more.
Listen NowQuestions or comments? Topics you’d like to hear us discuss? Contact us at [email protected].
Show Transcript(Transcript auto-generated)
00;00;00;10 – 00;00;08;14
VOICEOVER
Future trading involves risk and is not suitable for all investors. Content provided in this segment is meant for educational purposes and is not a solicitation to buy or sell commodities.
00;00;08;17 – 00;00;29;28
Mike
Hello and welcome to Hog Talk, brought to you by Ever AG Insights. Each week we talk with subject matter experts on news and topics affecting the hog markets. I’m your host, Mike McGuinness. We get started today with a review of the markets. Today is Tuesday, September 24th, 2024. The lean hog contract for December up. Also most of the deferred contracts trading higher.
00;00;30;04 – 00;00;50;14
Mike
December up 15 at 75 right now on this Tuesday. But really the lean hog futures have finished higher for the sixth day in a row. And seems like we have some support there, some buyers in that hog market. And we’re going to talk in just a moment with Doctor Steve Meyer. Our guest today ever eggs senior economist. So thank you Steve for joining us today.
00;00;50;17 – 00;00;51;13
Steve
Yeah good to be with you.
00;00;51;14 – 00;00;57;18
Mike
Well let’s get your take on that strong six day streak of higher markets and the lean hog futures contract. What’s going on there.
00;00;57;18 – 00;01;16;12
Steve
Well I’d say it’s about time. I’ve been kind of a cockeyed optimist on this for some time, and I thought that we had a real chance to hold these markets together as we went through the fall. My forecast for the CME lean Hog index had been four $5 higher than the October and December futures until the last week, and they’ve kind of caught up and they’re still lower than what my forecasts are.
00;01;16;12 – 00;01;35;15
Steve
But they certainly have closed the ground on that quite a bit. And I would say are getting into the realm of reasonably priced. Now, that is not true of my forecast for 25. I mean, the futures still look to me to be significantly lower than where I think the lean hog index and most of the cash markets both cutout and spot markets, are going to be next year.
00;01;35;16 – 00;01;51;00
Steve
Now all of that could change day after tomorrow. Market hogs. Pigs are pork. But still, I would say it’s about time. And I think it’s kind of a function of, you know, I think we’ve had a lot of Missourians trading Lean Hog Future, show me it’s going to happen or I’m not going to do that. And it’s just hung in here very, very well.
00;01;51;01 – 00;02;08;10
Steve
And that value has hung in. Well, we’ve seen and we’ve seen loins perform well all year and have hung in there. The belly market has not really fallen apart at all. And so, you know, when I look at this, I’ve been expecting this to happen. So for once I kind of feel a little smug about this. But I shouldn’t get too much that way, that’s for sure.
00;02;08;11 – 00;02;11;03
Steve
Get a dose of reality pretty quick here. Humility must.
00;02;11;03 – 00;02;21;04
Mike
Prevail. Well, you mentioned the Hogs and Pigs report. It is coming out on Thursday. All indications show maybe an expansion of the hog herd. What is your take on the pre report estimates.
00;02;21;06 – 00;02;39;05
Steve
Well it says that market supplies might be up just a bit. But they’re going to be up by a smaller amount than they had been. So I would say just on the contrary I would say we’re going toward reductions in around Gerd. And this is probably going to be an intermediate report. The report estimates that I’ve seen the averages are very close to what I’m with here.
00;02;39;06 – 00;03;02;12
Steve
I mean, I’ve got the breeding herd down over 2% relative to a year ago. That’s about the same as it was in June. Not very much changed there. You had 6.8008 made and I’ve got 6.004, but that’s 2.8% lower than a year ago. And the pre report estimates are somewhere close to that. I’ve got the market herd basically unchanged just fractionally from a year ago on September 1st.
00;03;02;12 – 00;03;21;21
Steve
But again that number has been up substantially in some quarters. Recently it was up 1.5% last quarter. It was up 2.5 back in the spring. So that’s a smaller increase. And if you look at the weight categories, most of the increases in the heavies much smaller increases in the smaller pigs. So I think we’re kind of headed toward lower hog supplies going forward.
00;03;21;21 – 00;03;45;10
Steve
And when you take a lower breeding herd, and one of the things we need to realize, you know, people say, well, do you the failings or lessen this? If you look at history on this, we’re very close to kind of an asymptotic approach to the mathematical maximum on litters per breeding. And, you know, that’s governed by the length of gestation and the length of lactation and re breeding and all that, it can only go so far based on the biology of the animal.
00;03;45;10 – 00;04;05;04
Steve
And we have been just bouncing around the same kind of numbers. Not quite that good. Obviously, we’re never going to get to the mathematical maximum, but it’s been pretty steady. So if you’re going to reduce the breeding herd, you’re going to reduce farrowing. And I’ve got farrowing is down 2.6%. And of course the thing that we’ve watched the last several quarters has been this dramatic growth in pigs pay per litter.
00;04;05;04 – 00;04;28;12
Steve
And part of that was we spent three years not growing pigs per litter, which was very unusual. We’ve been going by about 1.3% per year up through 2019, and then basically flat the next three years until last September when the, you know, August pig crop came out for 2023. And then we’ve run three and 4% over and got right back to our trend growth on this last four quarters.
00;04;28;12 – 00;04;45;11
Steve
Now this quarter, though, we’re going to start comparing to a really good number last year. So the year over year change is not going to be as large. The analysts have it up 1.1%. I think that’s probably a little optimistic. I’ve only got it up 3/10 of 1% okay. So I’m not quite as optimistic. We’re going to grow litter sizes.
00;04;45;11 – 00;05;03;14
Steve
But if you’ve got 2.6% less farrowing and less than 1% growth in litter size, you’re going to have less pigs in this generous pig crop than you did a year ago. And I’ve got it down 2.4. I might be a little bit optimistic on that. As far as what the impact on markets might be next year, but still, I think we’ve moved from you know, steady.
00;05;03;14 – 00;05;19;19
Steve
She goes kind of we’ve reduced the breeding herd but we’ve increased productivity. But I think now we’re going to start seeing some reduction in pig supplies going into 25. And that’s the reason I’m relatively optimistic about 2025, especially relative to the lean hog futures are trading now.
00;05;19;19 – 00;05;36;07
Mike
Well if you are right that would be fairly friendly for this rally to continue if the hogs and pigs report comes out that way. Now corn continues to chop around a little bit. It’s up $0.28 in the last month. But does this mean heavier hogs? The question, I guess to you is what does this mean for the market this fall and winter?
00;05;36;14 – 00;05;52;22
Steve
Well, yeah, it does mean heavier hogs. And if you look compared to last year, I mean again, we have to be careful about the denominator effect here. I mean, we’ve got much heavier hogs now than we did a year ago because we had much wider hogs a year ago than we did the year before that, because feed costs were so ridiculously high last year.
00;05;52;22 – 00;06;20;17
Steve
Those costs have moderated. We’ve made these hogs bigger, and they’re going to stay bigger all the way through the fourth quarter. I’ve got weights, you know, making up for about 1% of that reduction in slaughter as we go forward. And I think that’s a reasonable number. Lower feed costs are one of the reasons for that. You know, as we reduce pig numbers, there’s especially vertically integrated operations that have their own packing, are going to have an incentive to maybe put a little weight on those pigs to try to increase, keep their poundage up their tonnage going through their plants.
00;06;20;17 – 00;06;34;17
Steve
And so, yeah, we’re going to have heavier hogs we did a year ago and heavier hogs than we did last week, because we have this seasonal increase that always happens at this time of year as temperatures cool. And as we get better tasting fresh corn into these diets and pigs just eat more.
00;06;34;22 – 00;06;48;03
Mike
Well, that means more pork. So that means to talk about the consumers. Consumers remain a little bit tentative about food purchases. At the latest retail store report that came out showed lower sales. Can pork demand overcome economic pressures?
00;06;48;09 – 00;07;02;16
Steve
Oh yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I don’t see, you know, the economic pressures aren’t nearly as great as they were a year ago because we don’t have the kind of inflation rate we had. And food prices are getting more affordable. And so the purchasing power of those dollars are getting better. We had a rate cut last week.
00;07;02;16 – 00;07;22;01
Steve
It’s going to be somewhat stimulative to the economy. That’ll reduce the amount that people have to spend on credit cards and other debt and leave some money in the deal in their pockets. So I’m guardedly optimistic. When we look at real per capita expenditure for pork, they’ve been higher May, June, July than they were a year ago. First four months of the year was down, so we’re just about dead.
00;07;22;01 – 00;07;40;04
Steve
Even with a year ago year to date on real per capita expenditures, which is a reasonable measure of where demand has been, because this is going into the last four months, five months of the year, which are the strongest consumer level demand months for pork. There’s a fallacy that that pork demand goes up when we start grilling in the summertime, and it’s just wrong.
00;07;40;04 – 00;07;58;10
Steve
Pork demand is highest in the fourth quarter because we move a lot more tonnage, and we don’t have to reduce the retail price in order to get that move. So quantity goes up, price stays the same. That means demand is higher and we’re going into that time of year. So I’m guardedly optimistic about this demand situation given macro forces that are out there.
00;07;58;10 – 00;08;17;27
Steve
My caveat on that is that exports have been a big driver this year at 9% in value so far this year. On a nominal basis, up about 6% on a real deflated basis on the value of our exports. So that’s been a big driver of demand. Now, I think we’re safe on that for this year. But the results of this election could have some real wonky things going on.
00;08;17;27 – 00;08;45;08
Steve
I mean, we can have tariffs, we can have all kinds of things happening. And so that’s kind of a question mark for 25. And beyond that we don’t have an answer for right now. But we have to recognize that the risk is out there. It’s been really good so far. If we look at combination of consumer level demand and export demand, you know, we’ve got the cutout value higher than a year ago and the quantity of pork, total quantity of pork that we’re selling higher than a year ago, well quantities up and prices up.
00;08;45;08 – 00;09;02;20
Steve
That means demand has to be. And in fact, this 2024 demand level is going to be not very far below the 21 and 22 levels that were just off the charts when we witnessed them a couple of years ago. And of course, those were driven by stimulus payments to consumers. We don’t have that in place this time. And yet we still got pretty good, man.
00;09;02;21 – 00;09;08;22
Steve
So that’s one of the reasons I’ve been pretty optimistic as we’ve gone through this summer and fall, looking forward into 25.
00;09;08;26 – 00;09;26;16
Mike
Well, you mentioned exports. East Coast and US Gulf ports accounted for 45% of waterborne U.S. pork exports in the month of July alone. There is a looming strike by longshoremen on those two ports that could threaten exports. If this actually comes to fruition. What’s the impact here, Doctor Meyer?
00;09;26;18 – 00;09;49;14
Steve
Well, it’s certainly not good. I think we do have to keep in perspective. That’s 45% of waterborne exports and 40% of our total exports never hit the water. They go to Mexico and Canada. So it’s 45% of 60%, which is about a quarter of our total pork exports move out those East Coast and Gulf ports. Now, if you shut the ports down, that product is not going out those ports.
00;09;49;18 – 00;10;02;22
Steve
The question is, can you get it out some other way? Yeah, I’m not optimistic about that, because if, you know, there’s a lot of other things can’t go out the East Coast, all of them are going to flow west and that’s going to blow things up on our West Coast ports. I think it’s just going to be a disruption.
00;10;02;22 – 00;10;23;05
Steve
The key on this is how long does it last? We had a discussion among our staff this morning. Somebody pointed out, boy, they’re a long ways apart and the demands are so great and everything. And I observed, you know, yeah. When you’re in labor negotiations, everything looks bleak until the moment that they’ve done this thing. Good, bad, bad, bad, bad and get right to the drop dead deadline and get solved.
00;10;23;06 – 00;10;42;02
Steve
You also have the possibility the Biden administration could come in and try to influence this. The question is, how long does it last? And we have to realize that, you know, 25% of our exports, that’s not some insignificant number. That’s about 6% of production. So if that starts backing up here, it certainly could have a negative impact on cutout values and on the hog market.
00;10;42;02 – 00;10;46;18
Steve
But I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it at this point other than monitor the situation.
00;10;46;18 – 00;10;52;11
Mike
Well, great points and as always, we enjoy visiting with you about all of the goings on in the pork industry. So thanks again.
00;10;52;11 – 00;10;53;24
Steve
Thank you very much, Mike. Good day.
00;10;53;25 – 00;11;10;03
Mike
Doctor Steve Meyer, ever a senior economist. Thanks, Doctor Meyer, for your insights and thank you for joining us today. If you’ve enjoyed listening to Hog Talk, be sure to tell a friend or two and subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you to the Insights Crew for their work on today’s show.
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