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Pork profits to drop in 2015
A year ago the hog market saw record high prices.
Purdue ag economist Chris Hurt says concerns about how the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus would affect production drove the hog market higher. “There were rumors of how bad that disease was – and it certainly was bad,” he says. “But there was talk a year ago at this time that up to 20 percent of all baby pigs would not survive in 2014.”
Hurt tells Brownfield that uncertainty raised concern for pork buyers. “We saw short supplies and weren’t sure how much,” he says. “But just a lot of uncertainty. That lead us to record high prices. Live prices got to $100 per hundred weight. And then what we saw was pork production only decline 2 percent last year.
Which, he says, has caused pork prices to drop drastically in recent months.
At the start of the start of 2015, profits were expected to be around $25 per head – but his updated calculations have that number closer to the $8 to $10 per head range.
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