HUMBOLDT, Sask. – Producers should be locking in pig prices with futures contracts this year because there’s no telling what the market might do, says the manager of Saskatchewan’s pork marketing agency.
“There are a lot of wild cards in the short term prospects,” Jim Morris told a seminar here. “Expect volatility.”
He told producers to forget about a repeat of 1996, which ended with high steady prices. Last year producers received about $177.80 per hundred kilograms for their hogs, but this year it should be lower, between $160 and $170.
Prices could be pushed up or down by a number of factors.
Canadian hog prices could climb, Morris said, if European hog cholera cramps production there. As well, Porcine Reproductive Respiratory Syndrome in the U.S. could cut sales and production there, opening markets in Korea for Canadian pork and China appears set to open its borders to more pork.
But Morris added Japanese trade barriers, European subsidies to Russian sales, and possible worldwide growth in hog production could depress pork prices.
