January 17, 2005

 

 

Substantial Increase In US Pork Exports To Japan

 

Pork exports for January-November were up 26.6% from a year earlier and up 15% from all of 2003. Our pork exports to Japan for the first 11 months were up 13.4%, to Canada up 20.2%, to Mexico up 59.8%, to Russia up 358.0%, to South Korea down 21.4%, to Hong Kong down 20.8%, to China (mainland) up 89.4%, to Taiwan up 50.3%, and to the Caribbean up 57.3%

 

For some reason our pork exports to Japan have increased substantially relative to a year earlier since July. For January-July our pork exports to Japan were up 6.3% from 12 months earlier. For August they were up 18%, for September up 29.6%, for October up 34.6%, and November up 40.5%. These changes are compared to a year earlier.

 

The strong growth in Mexico continues and started before the cow with BSE was discovered in the U.S. For example, our exports to Mexico in October of 2003 were up 34.6% from 12 months earlier. For November of 2003 exports to Mexico were up 50% from a year earlier.

 

If the November trend continues through December, we will be poised to start the year of 2005 off with good gains. In November, total pork exports were up 36.3% from the same period in 2003, as noted earlier up 40.5% to Japan, up 27.9% to Mexico and up 960.8% to Russia compared to November a year earlier. Granted, in November of 2003, our exports to Russia were only a little over 2 million pounds, but by November of 2004 they purchased about 21.5 million pounds --- just slightly less than our exports to Canada and our fourth largest buyer for that month.

 

Current conditions would indicate we will start 2005 with as much or more momentum as to growth in exports as started 2004. If so, the probabilities may be quite high for 2005 to be our fourteenth consecutive year with record high exports and the fifteenth consecutive year with pork export growth.

 

Pork imports for January-November were down 7.4% from last year. For these 11 months in 2004, the U.S. had a net export of 5.16% of production compared with 2.58% net export for the same months of 2003. Our pork exports for January-November of this year amounted to 10.58% of production or a bit more than 1 out of every 10 hogs that we slaughtered for the first 11 months of the year were exported.

 

Hog prices came under pressure this week as packers attempted to improve their margins. They made some progress especially in the western areas of the country.

 

The top live prices this Friday morning were from $1.50 higher to $3.50 per cut lower compared to a week earlier.

 

Average weighted base carcass prices were from $0.15 to $0.94 lower compared to 7 days earlier on Friday morning.

 

The top live prices for select markets on Friday were: Peoria $46.00 per cwt, St. Paul $46.50 per cwt, Sioux Falls (N/A) per cwt, and interior Missouri $48.75 per cwt.

 

The average carcass base prices by area were: western Cornbelt $72.03 per cwt, eastern Cornbelt $67.09 per cwt, Iowa-Minnesota $72.09 per cwt, and nation $69.88 per cwt.

With the lower prices for hogs on average and some higher product prices on average packer margins should be improved some from last week.

 

Slaughter under Federal Inspection was estimated at 2045 thousand head --- down 2.8 percent from a year earlier.