Articles - Economy

Prices are drifting down to close out the year and if you look to the futures as a guide for next year, it is boringly normal. This happens when people have no real idea what to expect…

In view of the unprecedented time we are living in, we are publishing this monthly commentary a few days early.

How the pig prices are negotiated in Spain's reference market? Mercolleida represents the market with the highest pig slaughtering activity within the European Union.

Pig prices in the European markets deteriorated significantly last week. The German market was the only one to hold out.

The price of pork in Spain is the highest in Europe, both currently and in terms of the average so far this year (although the downward trend observed is irreversible in the short-term and will continue).

Spanish producers should make it a priority to be more efficient and should realize that growth cannot continue indefinitely.

How long this will last is anyone’s guess but here are a few things which combine to provide the briefest pause, for a moment of hope.

Spanish slaughterhouses are demonstrating extraordinary resilience. Pig prices in Spain are grossly higher than in any of the competing European countries.

For most of the month, our price in Spain has been 25 cents higher than in Holland and about 20 cents higher than Germany. What is the key?

Flexibility is paramount now. How will pork production change in the coming years?

Although the price of pork in Germany remains frozen, in Spain it continues to rise and is already three times higher than the United States...

Making predictions is never easy, but making future projections in these times of COVID-19 proves difficult for even the best analysts.

It is not the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest who survive, but those who are best able to adapt to change.

A 10% cumulative drop in the price of pork in Spain seems mild, very mild indeed for what is to come. Hold on tight, there are curves coming...

The challenges facing the global pork chain from the multi-headed monster pandemics of African Swine Fever in swine and COVID-19 disease in humans are breathtaking.

Pork prices are declining due to lower demand from slaughterhouses affected by labor shortages and problems in foreign market access.

The price of pork in Spain is well above that of Europe. With a weekly slaughter of 1,000,000 head, how will coronavirus affect slaughterhouse workers or reduce purchasing from the hotel and catering industry?

Random shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic will severely disrupt supply chains.

Restoring normalcy in China is the key factor in the current world market for pork. That's just how things stand.

We believe that the price of pork in Spain won't drop until after summer.

In US, even with record China sales, production overwhelms the markets, a quite different situation than in Spain, where pig prices soar while packers make handsome profits on exports without being able to raise the prices for pork going into domestic and retail sales.

As we close an exceptional year in the pork industry, Spanish's analyst Guillem Burset analyzes the current situation and clues us in to how next year may be.

Overwhelming euphoria should not blind us or cloud our senses: What will happen when China returns to self-sufficiency?

With the emergence of artificial, "lab-grown" meat, What does the future hold for livestock farming? will livestock farming disappear all-together?