Grimes and Plain Weekly Hog Outlook

CHICAGO - Jan 12/07 - SNS -- Following is a week ending hog market comment from the University of Missouri - Columbia's Glenn Grimes and Ron Plain.

Cash prices for negotiated hogs started the week with strength but faltered after Monday.

The cash live prices Friday morning were $0.75 higher to $2.00 per cwt lower compared to 7 days earlier. Weighted average negotiated carcass prices were $0.71 higher to $0.96 lower compared to a week earlier.

The live top prices Friday morning at select markets were: Peoria $36.00 per cwt, St. Paul $36.00 per cwt, Sioux Falls $37.50 per cwt and interior Missouri $40.25 per cwt.

Pork product prices at $62.25 per cwt of carcass were down $1.74 per cwt Thursday afternoon compared to a week earlier. The prices by wholesale cut showed loins at $74.57 per cwt, down $6.97 per cwt from 7 days earlier; Boston butts down $2.56 per cwt at $70.34 per cwt from last week; hams at $52.02 per cwt, up $1.11 per cwt from a week earlier; and bellies up $1.46 per cwt at $81.09 per cwt.

Pork exports in November 2006 set a new record high in tonnage, up 3% from the previous record set in March of 2006.

Total pork exports for January - November set a new annual record with the exports 2% larger than for the full year of 2005.

Pork exports in November of 2006 were up 22% from a year earlier. Japan made the largest monthly purchase of pork from us for the year and up 20.3% from 12 months earlier.

For January - November pork exports were up 12.1% from a year earlier. Even though Japanese imports of pork from us were up in November they were down 5.2% for January - November. However, Canada was up 7.8%, Mexico up 14.9%, Russia up 130%, South Korea up 49.6%, China/Hong Kong up 9.8%, Taiwan up 1.9%, Caribbean up 59.7% and other up 7.3%.

Net pork exports as a percent of production increased from 7.95% in January - November of 2005 to 9.43% of production for the same months of 2006. This is one of the major reasons why demand for live hogs was so much stronger in 2006 than the domestic consumer demand for pork.

Pork imports for January - November of 2006 were down 2% from a year earlier with the decline mostly from Canada, which was down 4% for the first 11 months of 2006 from 2005.

Live hog imports from Canada were up 7.6% in January - November compared to 12 months earlier. Feeder pig imports were up 12.2%, but slaughter hog imports were down 1.2% for the first 11 months of 2006 compared to a year earlier. We expect this trend to continue.

Slaughter this week under Federal Inspection was estimated at 2,105 thousand head, up 1.8% from a year earlier.

Issued by Glenn Grimes and Ron Plain

University of Missouri - Columbia

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