October 18, 2010

China remains world's largest pork producer

China remains the world's largest pork producer with 49.1 million sows in 2010, according to the 2010 Pork Powerhouses report.

That number is up from 48.8 million sows last year, and 35.5 million a decade ago in 2000. Back in 1990, China had 25 million sows, meaning the figure has almost doubled in the past 20 years.

The EU-27 has been dropping in sow numbers the past 10 years. This group includes Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The EU-27 has 13.9 million sows in 2010, the same as one year ago. Five years ago these countries combined for 15.3 million sows. In 2000, the number was 15.5 million.

Brazil is another large pork producer with about three million sows in 2010, same as last year. The country had 3.1 million sows in 1990, so no big changes to sows in Brazil for 20 years. However, as is the case with the US and most countries, pig production has gone up tremendously in Brazil thanks to better genetics and other factors improving sow productivity. Brazil produced 21 million pigs in 1990 and 37 million pigs in 2010 from basically the same amount of sows.

South Korea is another sizable producer with 966,000 sows in 2010, compared with 887,000, 10 years ago and 627,000, 20 years ago.

Chile has about 355,000 sows and produces five million pigs a year.