Agricultural News
Roy Lee Lindsey Looks at Pork Industry's 2014
Tue, 25 Nov 2014 17:44:43 CST
Oklahoma hog industry is adapting to the changing business climate. Oklahoma hog producers have been raising hogs from birth to market, but that is changing with the price of inputs. When hogs farms were built the cost of diesel was a minimal expense to transport hogs to market. Now with price of diesel up to $4 a gallon that has changed the economics of the situation. Oklahoma Pork Council Executive Director Roy Lee Lindsey said producers are having to decide - does it make sense to haul the corn to the hogs or the hogs to the corn.
Hog production will continue to exist in Oklahoma. Today Oklahoma is the nation's 5th largest sow producing state in the nation and Lindsey looks for that sector to grow as hog farmers will continue to raise piglets that will be shipped to the midwest. The Seaboard plant in Guymon will also continue to demand hogs for processing. He looks for the state to maintain an inventory for that processing plant. He said there is no chance for the state to move up in terms of total hog production and he contends the state will likely fall on the list for total hogs and pigs.
"But outside of that narrow window, everything that is outside the Panhandle of Oklahoma is going to looking to relocate in move baby pigs from Oklahoma up into the midwest," Lindsey said.
Radio Oklahoma Network Farm Director Ron Hays interviewed Lindsey. Click or tap on the LISTEN BAR below to listen to the full interview.
Lindsey said this a trend going on across the United States. Market hog numbers are trending down in a lot of states, including South Carolina, which was the second largest hog producing state over the last 30 years.
Hog production is growing in areas across the cornbelt. Lindsey said hog production is now showing up in South Dakota because of their increasing corn production.
The state's pork producers have a wild year with both ups and downs. At the start of the year producers will dealing with the effects of the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) cases. Lindsey said PEDv was very tough on producers.
"The loss of all those pigs was extremely difficult to deal with from an emotional toll just from day after day instead of raising healthy pigs, you are having to euthanize pigs," Lindsey said. "Tremendous emotional toll as you go through that."
Through the year the impact of PEDv lessened and price and the price of corn has declined thus improving the outlook for producers. Lindsey said producers this year had lower input costs and with the tightened domestic supplies the price of pork increased.
"You had some time where you saw record hog prices and you saw low corn prices and that translates into some profitability for producers," Lindsey said.
"An opportunity to kind of put some money back in the bank and fill in some of the equity hold that had been building over the last three or four years as we saw really high corn prices in the drought a couple years ago in the cornbelt, Lindsey said. "A tremendous impact on profitability for producers, so we got to dig out of that a little bit if you will and now we anxiously wait to see what we get into in 2015."
Ron Hays will be joined by Lindsey on the "In the Field" segment Saturday morning at 6:40 on KWTV News9 in Oklahoma City.
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