Pork production during the final three months of this year is forecast to be 5 percent smaller than the year-earlier figure, keeping prices for slaughter hogs high, says the monthly Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook report. “Hogs are being marketed at somewhat lower than expected weights,” says the USDA report. “Fourth-quarter commercial pork production is expected to be almost 6 billion pounds, 5 percent below a year ago”
The rising value of the dollar and continued high U.S. pork prices have slowed pork exports, says USDA, while making foreign-produced pork less expensive to import. “The U.S. is expected to import about 265 million pounds of pork products in the fourth quarter of 2014, almost 14 percent above the same quarter a year ago,” says USDA.