Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Bad news Chad’s hog outlook


Shakespeare – Chad Hart, a University of Iowa agriculture economist specializing in grains, brought nothing but bad news to about 150 people, 20 of them students at Ridgetown, to the Shakespeare Swine Seminar here today.

He said the current hog-industry crisis, with losses of $30 to $50 per hog, will be worse than the record-breaking crisis of 2008-2009.

He said losses will persist until at least a year from now and perhaps for two to three years.

He said the drought-reduced corn crop, which is responsible for the losses, carries more bad news – lighter bushel weights and therefore less nutrition than last year’s high-quality harvest and aflotoxin contamination from pockets of Southern Iowa.

Aflotoxin-contaminated corn used to be banned from the market, but this week the United States government waived that rule, allowing that corn to be “blended off” with toxin-free corn to the point that there ought not to be a problem for hogs consuming the feed.

But Hart said farmers will need to be cautious about the corn quality they buy and how they feed it.
Although he didn’t say so, it’s likely to be riskier to feed rations with any aflotoxin content to sows than to near market-ready hogs.

He said ethanol plants are extremely wary of aflotoxin-laced corn, so that means it’s going to be pushed into feed.

Ethanol producers are cutting back so there will be less dried distillers grains and that’s going to hurt hog farmers who have come to depend on that for feed. Some will have to switch to other feed sources and the hogs won’t like that change in their ration.

Hart said it will be at least six months – when corn and soybean crops in South America reach harvest – before there will be any relief on the cost of feed.

But he also said it’s unlikely that there will be another drought disaster in the U.S. Midwest next year because back-to-back droughts have seldom happened.

However, if there is another drought next year, he said corn prices could go from just under $8 a bushel now to $10.

He said hog marketings will continue to increase as farmers ship at lighter weights and cull sows, pushing volumes to packing-plant capacity in October and November. He said whenever hog marketings reach plant capacity, hog prices go down.

If farmers react swiftly to the bad markets to quit hog production or to drastically cut back, hog prices could pick up enough to cover cash costs by late next summer, he said.

If production persists, it could be 2014 before hog prices go high enough to cover cash costs and 2015 before they’re high enough to restore reasonable profit margins.

He said consumers are in a bad economy and unlikely to be willing to pay high prices for meat.

He compared costs of production calculated by Iowa State University and by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and said he’s surprised that Canadians hold a cost advantage over Iowa on weaner pig production costs.

Iowa farmers hold an advantage on finishing hogs which, he said, explains why Canadians sell weaner pigs to Iowa finishers and then U.S. packers market pork to Canadian supermarket chains.

He said production practices, genetics and efficiencies are similar, so the cost gap between Ontario and Iowa has narrowed over the last four to five years.

He said Iowa lost half of its hog farmers in the 2008-09 crisis, but none of its production volume. He anticipates a similar pattern will prevail in this crisis.