Articles - Economy

If no disturbing health factors appear, this year will be remembered as a very positive one.

The next time you hear someone over lunch tell you the value of a tenth improvement in FCR, unless they are drawing a distribution on your napkin, tell them you don’t run an average pig business so you are not interested in their average values.

The Spanish price will rise until well into summer, and the range of the rise will depend on Europe.

Feed efficiency as it is measured by the feed conversion ratio (FCR) is basically an engineering concept. There are a lot of misconceptions about feed efficiency and even more surrounding the economics associated with it.

The future for the European pig producers seems clear and the heart of the matter lies in knowing how the different markets will reposition themselves.

Increased prices for pork will lead to decreases in quantity demanded by the vast majority of consumers, export and domestic. This is especially the case in the current structurally high unemployment situation which has seen inflation-adjusted per capita personal income fall steadily since the market crash of 2007.

We fear that in the short term, the collapse caused by the Russian closure will become more evident and, that with it, the price will inevitably fall again.

Shuanghui International’s goal is the Chinese government’s goal, to acquire long-term, low cost sources of China’s favorite meat by forming long term, low risk, globally coherent pork and agricultural resources chains and they are well on way to that goal.

It seems that the price has initiated its spring rise, but many factors intervene. Whilst the Russian borders are still closed the collapse of some cuts (especially fats) will be inevitable.

The Philippine Bureau of Agricultural Statistics reported an increased of nearly 2.4% in the country's hog production during the first half of 2013.

Time will tell if PEDV is the cause but weaned pig and feeder pig prices began to turn up in June, a couple of months ahead of their traditional seasonal bottoming with the turn toward seasonal highs which peak usually in February or March.

We are closing the financial year at the minimum level in the whole year, in a turbulent setting that will need three or four weeks to clarify itself.

When you earn a profit, you have created more tangible value than the cost of the scarce global resources used to create your final product.

Globalization is a fact, and regional or national peculiarities are progressively less important.

This is done by moving from single most likely value to ranges of possible outcomes with an assigned probability

Europe is facing difficulties for selling its meat: Russia restricts its importations and in the Asian markets it must compete with pig meat from the American continent.

Political decisions in the form of new laws, regulations, permitting requirements, etc. are extra-market forces which can cause market costs and revenues to swing significantly from the pathway set down by fundamental forces, like supply and demand.

In September Spain has started a downward trend spiral. The livestock supply is very high, and the maximum activity of the abattoirs cannot even absorb it.

Understanding the market dynamics of feed ingredient costs is crucial not only to manage overall costs of production but to ensure effective strategies in purchasing, margin hedging, peak line of credit acquisition and liquidity or financial risk management.

The annual pig meat production is 500,000 tons, and the amount assigned to exportation reaches a 40% of the total. The geographical characteristics of Chile provide it with unique conditions that have allowed the eradication of diseases such as PRRS.