If you want to know the impact of increased corn prices on your cost of production, chose a forecasted corn price (take your pick of forecaster between $3.40 and $3.85 with some as high as $5.00+ if drought develops) and crank through your feed cost calculation. If you do this and it actually turns out to be your new cost of production, you will be one of the last few producers in the pork industry with absolutely no imagination whatsoever.
One thing we know for certain is that people do not face adversity sitting still. All kinds of secondary strategies, impacts, cost cutting, substitutions, new research and experiments, adjustments in weights and plain ingenuity immediately move to the forefront. In addition, poultry producers and other meat animal species that consume corn are making similar adjustments as are tortilla makers, users of high fructose corn sweeteners and even elevator/feed mills that used to get the corn. As they do, the prices of their products change relative to the price of pork and demand shifts begin to take place at the grocery store and throughout the chain.
