All through the U.S. Midwest dark clouds have been bringing in bad weather, pounding some areas with thunderstorms and ripping up others with tornadoes.
I’m in Des Moines right now, covering the World Pork Expo, and grey clouds and thunderstorms have been haunting the city since I got here last night. An explosive thunderstorm struck this morning at 6 a.m. But through today little bits of blue have broken out and made the day seem nicer. And right now there are blue bits at the edges of the grey crepe that’s right over head. The weather report says tomorrow’s supposed to be up to 85 degrees in old timey temperatures, with blue skies and sun. But then Thursday and Friday are supposed to be full of rain and badness.
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So what is the weather this week? Good or bad? It’s rather hard to sum it up.
I’m going to stretch a simile here and say that this seems to be exactly the situation the North American hog industry is in right now. Is this a good time or a bad time? Hard to tell.
There’s no H1N1 hanging over the industry this year, but there’s the FMD that’s broken out in Asia. The market’s not abysmal, but it has slumped back from the nice rally it seemed to be offering and leaves the future murky. COOL’s a fact of life and Canadian producers and American producers have found ways to deal with it, but weanling producers especially still seem to be in a precarious position. World trade in pork seems to be a little less disrupted than at some times in the past, but the hangover of the world financial crisis and pork trade snarls with countries like Russia and China still makes the industry feel a bit queasy.
So it sure doesn’t feel like good times. But it doesn’t really feel like bad times either. Like this friggin weather hanging over my head and flipping back and forth from rainy grey to blue sunny and giving me migraines: can’t make up its mind. I’m going to be immersed in the North American hog industry for the next few days. I wonder if that will make the situation any more clear in my mind. Or will it leave it just more woozy with conflicting information and contradictory signals?
In a few minutes I’m going to the media reception with the leaders of the National Pork Producers Council. I wonder if they have any clearer sense of the situation the industry’s in. I’ll ask. If they have a convincing answer, I’ll let you know.
