There's a lot happening in the Pork Industry today

There’s a lot happening in the pork industry today. Brazil bought into the global beef and pork business in a big way with J & F Participacoes, S.A. purchase of Swift & Co. ending a long speculation (since 2002) about who would eventually own those assets. Those who predicted countries like Brazil, with underdeveloped infrastructure and disease containment mechanisms would have a hard time competing with U.S. produced beef and pork in the export market just got a valuable lesson. If you don’t have everything you need domestically to compete, you can always consider buying the capabilities and attributes abroad. We went down there for cheap inputs. They came up here for access to the Pacific markets among other things.

Worries continue to flourish regarding whether another pork packer or plant might go dark this year following the lead of Bryan Foods in West Point, Mississippi. Even if the production and chain capacity are balanced on the national level, that doesn’t mean they are or will be shortly on the regional level. Regional supply assurance for packers is a real risky situation right now as smaller and medium-sized producers decide what their future will look like with $3.50 corn. Ethanol subsidies and mandated purchases have created a bit of a gold rush (albeit now late stage gold rushes) in the corn and distilling businesses. As a matter of fact, there are several interesting gold rushes in progress around the world which play around the pork industry in one way or another, including the economies of China and India. Gold rushes have a rather predictable lifecycle and eventual outcome so it will be interesting to watch these work themselves through to a landing, soft or otherwise in the next couple of years.

There are some things sneaking up on pork producers that will deserve some careful consideration. Here's one of them: Think about the meaning of domestication some night when you are sitting on the back deck sipping a cold one. What are the new "natural behaviors" and needs of an animal once it has been domesticated? Changing those natural behaviors creates dependencies when humans sort of take up light housekeeping with the animals. So how does that change the proposed responsibility that we must provide our domestic herds with the ability to express natural behaviors as part of our moral obligation to them? The meaning of domestication of livestock will be the central pivot point in defining a new code of conduct or some might say a new social contract between you and your animals. I’m really not kidding so start sippin' and start thinking.