If you take the long look at the history of hog prices you see two significant shifts since 1950. These are both upward movements to new equilibrium levels and they happened beginning in about 1971 and 1999 (or 2003 if you see it that way). Both were the result of rapidly increasing (new) demand for agricultural commodities and were more or less unrelated to the economic movements of the general economy at the time. The first move in ag prices was the largest in percentage terms (but we are not completely finished with the second movement which began 6-8 years ago).
