China is reducing its hog herd due to an oversupply of pork, a move that is impacting U.S. corn exports. Bryan Irey, regional manager of the Crossroads Co-op, talked about what’s driving the shift.
“We could talk for another hour about demand in China in terms of the hog herd, and in terms of their general population sliding as far as it has. I look back at COVID and the massive number of human casualties that they had in China. I still believe that number is understated by far. I mean, they have just literally fallen off of the map here the last couple of years in terms of corn exports, and that’s directly related to the number of hogs that they have and directly related to their population dropping, because they just don’t have the demand from their population for pork that they once had.”
He said the drop in population has also played into China not importing more U.S. corn. U.S. pork exports in February recently totaled 574.24 million pounds, a 2.7 percent decline from January, which was the fourth-largest January on record.