333 Survey: Forecasts were low for a record year for hog prices

Last February we asked our users the following question: What do you think the price of pigs will be in your country in 2022? We received more than 800 responses from different countries. Now that the year is over, we have the actual average prices for 2022. Do you want to know who came closest?

As we can see in Graph 1, in most of the European Union countries analyzed (Spain, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and Romania), the prices expected by 333 users in February when the survey was conducted, were clearly lower than the actual price in 2022. Users in Russia, Brazil, Belgium, and Mexico were the most optimistic, forecasting values above the actual average price. Users in Russia, Argentina, and Brazil were the closest in their prediction to the actual average price.

It was difficult to foresee that the start of an armed conflict in February would put the system in a state of crisis, with high world energy and raw material prices leading to record pig prices in many of the producing countries. In addition to all these factors, in the EU there has been a significant drop in the pig inventory in some of the main producing countries, such as Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands.

China is worth noting; the actual average price was outside the range of predictions, reaching 19 CNY/kg live, a value that exceeds the average prices prior to the emergence of ASF.

As the graph below shows, every country from which we have analyzed data reached a record average price in 2022, with the exception of Russia, Brazil, and China.

Once again this year, we would like to know our users' predictions: What do you think the pig price in your country will be in 2023?

333 Staff