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Analyst has “odd” February advice for pork producers

A market analyst has what he calls some “odd” advice for U.S. pork producers. Steve Meyer with EMI Analytics tells Missouri pork producers that they should be looking to sell part of this year’s production right now because cash forecasts are not nearly as high as what the futures market is offering right now.

“The odd part is that I’m saying this the first week of February. Normally, these markets rally with cash into April and May but we’ve had some kind of odd occurrences here since December.”

And, he says those occurrences are reflected in the futures market, “We had a ham market that ran up that carried the cutout value late in the year, last year. We’ve had a big run-up in bellies prices in the last six weeks, eight weeks that has carried the market up – the cutout value and hog market up, here in the short run.”

Meyer says a big saving grace for pork producers right now is the cost of production which is better than it has been in a while. But he says pork producers are a short crop away from having higher corn and bean meal prices again so it’s best to remain cautious.

Meyer gave a market update to Missouri pork producers at the 2017 Missouri Pork Expo at the Holiday Inn Executive Center in Columbia, Missouri. The expo runs through midday on Wednesday, February 8th.