SwineCast Industry

What are some of the swine health programs run under the USDA and how are they doing? Dr. Troy Bigelow provides an update on the programs, where additional surveillance is needed, and what the future looks like. Take away: surveillance activities will continue to evolve and become more comprehensive.

Dr. Lisa Becton provides background on African Swine Fever situation in Russia, and in so doing provides some great background on the state of Russian pork production. Of note is almost half of the Russian pork production is on communal farms, peasant farms, or private small home farms, where the main use of pork production is a waste removal system.

Dr. Chris Hurt shares some economics updates and what producers need to consider on their feed management as 2012 moves forward. Key take away: Swine producers have the financial ability to outbid ethanol producers for corn. This is forcing ethanol plants to shrink in capacity or shut down. Also, foreign trade is becoming a key component for the industry.

China's growth means that many of its raw materials to sustain the growth must come from other parts of the world. To help gauge Chinese demand for materials, many companies and governments rely on estimates from the China National Bureau of Statistics and other sources, like U.S. Government agencies. If, however, the estimates are wrong one way or the other by a larger than expected margin, the commodity markets start to react, and cause some companies to loose business and revenue.

China's National Bureau of Statistics said that farms produced a record corn crop in 2011 of 191.8 million tonnes. But enthusiastic local officials often overstate the size of crops in China to impress central authorities and win bigger subsidies.

Sarah Hubbart, Animal Agriculture Alliance, says farmers and ranchers need to proactively step up and speak for themselves. The alternative is that other people will do the speaking and that most certainly will not acurately reflect the farmers' and ranchers' views.

Too often, agriculture is forced to be reactive, rather than proactive in discussing farm practices. But what if agriculture were in the drivers' seat in the race to influence public opinion?

Sarah offers some models currently being pursued by farms like Fair Oaks Dairy or Rose Acre Farms. And even if the the logistics of producing internet media is too much of a burden for some operations, there are opportunities to develop smaller approaches to sharing with groups of other agri-producers.

Pig Parts In Bullets? Christien Meindertsma, author of "Pig 05049", follows the many parts of a pig to see how they are used. Of the 185 products she discovered, she shares several surprising examples. Her goal? To create an awareness of the products so that we, society, can "take better care of what's behind our products". She says the first step is to know that they [the products] are there.

Paragon Economics Dr. Steve Meyer walks through meat demand, corn prices ($4-$8??) and weather issues.

The total feed supply is going down. Long term we need to get more efficient or we get smaller. Can we get efficient enough to that we can grow with a shrinking supply of energy feed?

Dr. Meyer also looks into the ethanol industry, how it fared in 2011 and what it may do in 2012, with respect to their need for corn inputs.

How will the pork industry fare in 2012? Dr. Steve Meyer says 2012 has five key issues to keep an eye on: exports, U.S. Demand, feed prices, hog/pork supplies, and packing capacity. Steve also highlights the relationships between crops and costs.

Total feed supply is going down. This means we either get more efficient or we get smaller.

How can you not love this! Pigs that play. This art and design project from Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) Wageningen University and Research Centre aims to understand how provide entertainment to pigs.

The driver for this research is European legislation that requires pig farmers to provide entertainment in the pens to combat boredom, aggression and tail biting amongst pigs, which will hopefully eliminate the need for routine tail-docking.

Dr. Steve Meyer, Paragon Economics, provided an update on the state of the meat and poultry markets. His main take away is that the demand continued to struggle late 2011.

The bad news is that these "annual" numbers for 2011 have been getting worse and worse as the year has progressed.

Steve reminds us that the indexes only describe how demand is changing, not why a change is occurring. He believes consumer incomes and spending was the major negative force in the domestic market in 2011.

Charts below from Paragon Economics, using USDA data.