Dear readers,

It’s not easy, but we still find good news:

• The Oregon Legislature approved a bill that will provide $9 million to support the State Meat Inspection Program for the next two years
• U.S. pork exports are up 14% to 1.47 million metric tons, while export value is up 12% to $4.05 billion in the first half of this year. While Mexico continues to be the main destination, and has now imported more than $1 billion of U.S. pork by now . Furthermore, this years exports are up 24% to China, 11% to Canada, 10% to South Korea, and 29% to the Dominican Republic.
• In Canada, 25 University of Saskatchewan researchers were awarded funding for projects that range from using artificial intelligence to monitor the well-being, developing vaccines and controlling microbial diseases. Five of these projects, totaling CAD 863,000, are at the USask-owned Prairie Swine Centre. 
• Farmers Defense Force of The Netherlands is considering entering in the political competition. Is time to defend ourselves also in this way.
• The export of pig products in Flanders has increased by 11 percent last year. Fresh pork recorded an export of 622,000 tons in 2022. 89 percent of the fresh pork exported by Flanders goes to other EU member states. In 2022, almost 60 percent was destined for three markets: Poland (313 million euros), Germany (295 million euros) and the Netherlands (160 million euros). The top list continues with Italy, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Romania, France, Bulgaria and South Korea.
• The Russian ban on the Black Sea grain corridor has been breached by several ships, led by a vessel under Israeli flag. They got trough without any harm. The last days have shown, however, that Russian do fire warning shots, if the ship is under the flag of Palau…

Events calendar:

International Exhibition Center Agrokomplex Nitra, Slovakia, hosts  for the 48th time the Agrokomplex Exhibition. It takes place on 4 days from Thursday, 17.08.2023 to Sunday, 20.08.2023.

Turn the Page

            Nothing is quiet on the western front.

Canada’s leading pork-producing province, Quebec, accounting for 31% of the country’s production, is mulling a measure that would essentially pay producers to exit the pork business in order to right-size the country’s market. Olymel, the leading pork processing company, will close a plant in December to cut weekly production from 140,000 pigs to 80,000.The state is looking for voluntary departures. For participants that agree to exit within a minimum of five years, insurance would cover two-thrids of the cost, and one-third would be paid by trade group Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec. Every member producer would have to pay C$2.86 to that organization for every hog they sell to cover their share of the expense. If too few producers exit, Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec will mandate all producers to cut production by a set percentage, according to the report. Is this measure justifying the name of the organization?

In Europe we also get new data from some main pig producing countries.

The Danish pig herd continues to decline sharply. Danish farms had 1.17 million pigs (-9.6 percent) less than on 1 July 2023, than a year earlier. By categories:

• fattening pigs decrease 16.5 percent to 2.33 million animals
• decrease in piglets up to 20 kg was 6.0 percent to 2.35 million animals
• pigs between 20 and 50 kilograms fell by 8.4 percent to 5.19 million head
• breeding sows show a decrease from 68,000 animals (-6.5 percent) to 1.12 million, the lowest number in ten years
• pregnant sows fell by 4.1 percent to 704,000
• number of non-pregnant sows fell by 8.3 percent to 419,000 animals

Even more, the slaughter volume in the period from January to the end of July decreased by approximately 20 percent compared to the same period in 2022 and we will see Danish Crow n closing slaughterhouses.

At the German neighbors number of animals of domestic origin slaughtered fell by 10 percent to 20.9 million pigs (previous year: 23.2 million). The 741,300 pigs slaughtered from abroad represent an increase of 19.6 percent compared to the same period last year. The share of foreign pigs in the total number of pigs slaughtered was 3.4 percent (same period last year: 2.6 percent).

We have an interesting precedent of a meat market crisis, 50 years ago, in the U.S.A. Some similarities: war, draught, inflation. There was a meat market boycott movement. During it the highest pressure fell also on the farmers, farm gate price decreased, while consumer price increased. Sounds familiar?

What we are doing? We are following the German way. In order to maintain slaughterhouses working at a high operational cost, instead of reducing their number, the major market players reduce their cost by imposing a lower farm gate price for the pigs.

And we, the other pig industry players in Europe, are following them, even is obvious that there is a huge decrease in the pig stocks. Isn’t it time to turn the page?

European pig and piglet prices: HW= Hot weight; L= live weight;

COUNTRY	PIG(EUR)	TREND	PIGLET(EUR)	TREND	OBSERVATION
GERMANY	2,40 HW		88/25 kg
NETHERLANDS	2,16-2,42 HW		71,5/25 kg
BELGIUM	1,75 L		68,5/20 kg
DANEMARK	1,85 HW		88,5/25 kg
FRANCE	2,228 L
ITALY	1,96 L 115kg, 2,28 L 160kg, DOC		133/30 kg
SPAIN	1,99 -2,01 HW		85-94/20kg
PORTUGAL	2,75 HW
AUSTRIA	2,34 HW		95/25 kg
POLAND	1,52-2,02 L		90-128/20-30 kg		Partner info; no quotation
CROATIA	2,05-2,55 HW		110-118/ 25 kg		Partner info; no quotation
SERBIA	2,04-2,09 L		110-131/ 25 kg		Partner info; no quotation
CZECH R.	2,35 – 2,43 HW		77-82/ 25 kg		Partner info; no quotation
SLOVAKIA	1,92 -1,97 L		110-113/25 kg		Partner info; no quotation
HUNGARY	1,96 – 2,09 L		110-113/ 25 kg		Partner info; no quotation
ROMANIA	1,9 – 2,02 L		110-113/25kg		Partner info; no quotation