Hog Producers Continue To Deal With 'Depressed' Prices

Jul 14, 2020

Hog producers continue to struggle with market options.

Tyler Fulton is with Hams Marketing Services.

"Still very depressed prices," he said. "The cash market in the United States has struggled to make any gains. We're burdened by huge supplies. The reality is that we're still not totally back up to 100 per cent capacity. Those extra hogs that aren't committed and need to be negotiated on a daily or weekly basis, those values are some of the lowest that we've seen in a decade."

Fulton says the U.S. hog slaughter continues to run at the highest levels that we've seen at this time of year, with the COVID-19 backlog still getting worked through.

He adds forward hog contract prices continue to struggle.

"There is not much opportunity to price hogs. The best weeks left in 2020 are running around that $130 per ckg, or maybe $135 at best...There's not a lot of optimism that anything's really going to change over the course of the next five or six months."

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