April 23, 2013

At the end of March 2013, US pork inventories climbed 6.3% from a year earlier, while warehouses held a record amount of beef at the end of the month.

Warehouses held 648.789 million pounds (294,286 tonnes) of pork, up from 610.318 million on March 31, 2012, the USDA said in a report on Monday (Apr 22). Inventories rose 2.4% from the end of February.

US exporters shipped 820.8 million pounds of pork in the two months through February 28, down 14% from a year earlier, the latest USDA data show. US commercial output of the meat this year will climb to the highest since at least 1970, the government has projected.

"Consistently, they have kept hog kills high," Dick Quiter, an account executive at McFarland Commodities LLC in Chicago, said in a telephone interview before the report. "Exports being what they have been and domestic demand being what it's been, it would not be surprising to see bigger numbers in the freezer," he said.

Hog futures for June settlement fell 0.9% to US$0.89 a pound at 11 a.m. on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Prices were up 5.2% this year through April 19. As of March 31, stockpiles of pork bellies, which are cured and sliced to make bacon, fell 22% from a year earlier to 51.491 million pounds, the USDA said. Warehouse supplies of ham rose 19% from a year earlier to 94.967 million pounds.

Chicken-meat inventories at the end of March were 7.6% larger than a year earlier at 617.886 million pounds, the USDA said. Beef supplies rose 2% to a record 513.243 million pounds.