China to stockpile frozen pork

China will begin stockpiling frozen pork in an attempt to prop up falling meat prices, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on May 15.

Stockpiling is planned to begin when the price per kilogram of live pigs remains at between 5.5 and 6 times the price of a kilogram of corn for four consecutive weeks. A state-owned storage facility is currently being built.

China’s pork industry is facing a glut, as the number of live pigs increased 8.5% compared with last year, to a total of 449 million head in March 2009, according to government statistics. Meanwhile, the wholesale price of pork fell to 14.49 yuan per kilo on May 10, a drop of over 22% compared to the beginning of this year.

China’s Sichuan province announced its own frozen pork stockpile plan earlier this month, reported the Chengdu-based West China City Daily newspaper.

In January six ministries jointly announced a plan to increase restrictions on pork imports.

China’s customs statistics showed that pork imports to Guangdong province decreased to 28,000 metric tons during the first quarter of 2009, a drop of 48.4% compared with the same period last year.

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Safe to eat pork says USDA, CDC

The US Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control said it is safe to eat pork.

USDA secretary Tom Vilsack said swine flu can’t be contracted from eating pork as the virus is not transmitted through food.

About 65 people in the US, 1,300 in Mexico, and people in Canada, Europe, Asia-Pacific countries and the Middle East have been infected by the hybrid influenza.

The US National Pork Board, too, has asked producers to increase biosecurity protocol in their farms.

Meanwhile, the World Organization for Animal Health stressed the flu should not be called “swine flu” as it contained avian and human components, according to a Reuters report. Also, there are no reports of pig being infected with it.

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Label of origin rule likely to decrease exports of Canadian hogs to US

The final US mandatory Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) rule issued earlier this month is likely to reduce shipments of live Canadian hogs to the United States, but increase exports of finished Canadian pork. Enforcement of the rule begins in April.

“My expectation is we’re probably going to see fewer hogs coming south into the United States and more pork,” says Dr Ron Plain, University of Missouri (USA) economist. “In fact, we seem to be trending up a little bit in hog slaughter in Canada,” he says in Farmscape online.

“I think when we look at the complications associated with record keeping and labelling and verifying the correct label that lots of times it’s going to end up more sensible and lower cost to slaughter hogs in Canada and send the pork south already labelled than it will be to send the hogs south,” Plain says.

“If you try to handle animals from more than one country on the same day, it becomes a real record keeping segregation challenge unless you’re going to just label it all US and Canada, so a lot of plants are wanting to go with only one label,” he adds.

USDA lowers corn price estimate

The US Department of Agriculture lowered its 2008-09 average corn price estimate to a range of $3.55 to $4.25/bushel in a 12 January report, 10 cents below the previous month’s estimate. The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) place this year’s soybean prices at $8.50 to $9.50 per bushel compared with an estimate of $8.25 to $9.75/bushel last month. Soybean meal prices are projected at $250 to $310 per short ton, up $10 on both ends of the range. On wheat, the projected season-average farm price is narrowed 10 cents on both ends of the range to a projection of of $6.50 to $6.90/bushel.

On coarse grains, USDA reduced feed and residual use by 50 million bushels, reflecting lower animal numbers and September-November disappearance as indicated by 1 December stocks. In addition, the department lowered ethanol use by 100 million bushels as sustained negative ethanol production margins have reduced incentives for ethanol output.

Looking at other crops, the sorghum season average farm price is lowered 10 cents to $2.90 to $3.50/bushel; barley narrowed 10 cents to $4.95 to $5.35/bushel; and the estimate for oats was raised 10 cents to $2.90 to $3.10.

The WASDE report reflects a lower meat production estimate from the previous month, with reduced 2009 broiler and pork production. Beef production forecasts for 2009 are unchanged.

Mong Reththy Group pork project to include feedmill

The Mong Reththy Group in Cambodia has plans for a pork project that also includes adding a feedmill with a projected output of 330,000 metric tons per year. In addition to boosting local pork production, the project would increase the incomes of corn, cassava and soybean farmers, while creating employment and new opportunities for production, says Kao Phal, director of the Animal Health and Production Department at the Ministry of Agriculture. Mong Reththy has set up a new company called M’s Pig ACMC in association with UK breeder ACMC, with which it has agreed a 20-year franchise deal. ACMC will deliver 600 breeding pigs for a new unit on a five-hectare site in the Prey Nop district of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, which will house a nucleus herd. Eventually this unit will supply enough commercial AC1 sows to produce 1.1 million slaughter pigs per year by 2015. The project also involves a slaughter/process plant for the pigs.

Marked rise in EU pig meat exports

The European Union (EU) exported over 1 million metric tons of pig meat in the first six months of 2008, representing an increase of more than 40% compared with exports in the same period of 2007.

Exports of frozen pork to Russia doubled to 142,000 metric tons, aided by the availability of export refunds. More frozen pork was shipped to Japan and Hong Kong, and the Ukraine has emerged as an important destination. In contrast, less was exported to South Korea and the United States than last year. The rise in exports of pig offal this year is primarily the result of increased trade with Hong Kong, Russia, and China. At 167,000 metric tons, exports to Hong Kong were almost double the volume exported in January-June 2007.

Data available from Danske Slagterier shows that Danish exports of pig meat have risen by 15% in the first half of 2008, with shipments to both Japan and Russia up 10%. There was more than a 60% increase in exports to China, mostly offal (36,000 metric tons).

Germany has also exported more pig meat outside of the EU this year, with chilled and frozen pork exports to Russia doubled to 28,000 metric tons. Russia has also become a major destination for French pork exports, up from 3,000 to 23,000 metric tons. German exports of pig offal to Hong Kong have doubled to 66,000 metric tons.

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Reducing Use of Water in Pork Production

Water to pork

An award-winning Australian unit has pioneered ways to reduce the use of water in pork production

Claire Penniceard operates The Pig Pen in Victoria, Australia, which is involved in a number of environmental initiatives including those on water use. “I have not been working to establish the reality or even the fine measurements climate change,” she declares. “We are all going to have to manage within some significantly changed parameters for agricultural production. I am about solutions, within whatever the final measurements of climate change turn out to be.”

Water matters a great deal when you operate in the world’s driest continent. So it should be no surprise that attempts in Australia at analyzing the inputs for agribusiness products have been particularly interested in water use.

In 2008, industry body Australian Pork Ltd will be completing a so-called life-cycle analysis or LCA of pig production, in which the usage of water will be a key point. Similar analyses have already been completed on behalf of the dairy, beef and grain industries, while Australian wine producers are participating in an international version covering grape culture.

Even now, some figures compiled in Australia indicate that producing pigs makes more effective use of scarce water resources than various other pig farming systems. A report in Australian journal WME Magazine quotes estimates from national research bureau ABARE for the financial return realized from each million litres required by an agribusiness enterprise. The figure for product value at farmgate prices per megalitre (ML) are said to range from A$400 for rice to A$700 for beef, sheep, cotton and sugar, whereas aquaculture is reckoned to earn up to A$120,000.

A report in Australian journal WME Magazine quotes estimates from national research bureau ABARE for the financial return realized from each thousand liters required by an agribusiness enterprise. The figure for earnings per ML are said to range from A$400 for rice to A$700 for beef and sheep, whereas aquaculture is reckoned to earn as much as A$120 000.

Note therefore the earnings per ML attributed by the WME report to one particular pig unit in Victoria, Australia. Trading as The Pig Pen and operated by Claire Penniceard, this is reckoned to make A$650 000 per ML of water. It is due partly to the animal, says the WME report. Monogastrics are far better than ruminants at feed efficiency. While it takes 8.5kg of grain-based feed to put a kilogram of meat on an average 65kg lamb in lot-fed situations, less than 2.5kg is needed for adding 1kg to a 100kg pig.

Other contributors to the comparatively low water requirement are listed to include the use of a highly integrated and efficient feedlot system. The reference here is to Claire Penniceard’s development of an enterprise in the Euroa area of northern Victoria over the past 7 years that now produces 28,000 pigs per year for export to Singapore from deep-bedded ecoshelters. A fundamental factor has been her desire to take sustainability to the maximum possible and to produce pigs with the smallest possible environmental footprint.

“An enterprise is not truly sustainable unless it can be repeated indefinitely,” she declared to WME editor Richard Collins. “As soon as you need top-ups from outside to keep the business going, you are no longer sustainable.”

When produced efficiently, she adds, pigs come out on top in most metrics of sustainable livestock production, from kilos of grain or feed per kilogram of meat produced to revenue per megalitre of water.According to the average rainfall recorded for the Euroa area, a block of land measuring only 48 metres x 30 metres would have been enough to receive the 4 megalitres of water that industry data suggested were needed for each of her 2 new pig production sites. Obviously this area would be far too small for producing pigs commercially, so she bought a block amounting to 250m x 250m or about 6.25 hectares. Each of these sites can harvest 34 megalitres of water per year.

Water quality is tested regularly at a laboratory in Victoriaauthorized to undertake the checks. The unit has established dual water sources from the town system and local extraction to guarantee continuity of supply and make it entirely independent of rainfall, all of which is therefore contributed to the environment. Rainwater trapped behind a dam on the property is made available to the Country Fire Association to take all it needs, a valuable social service in rural Australia.

Water and energy use at The Pig Pen are minimized by having open sheds in which a novel misting system helps to keep the pigs cool. Supplies from both water sources for the enterprise are piped directly into tanks and taken from there to the mister-cooler lines and drinkers in the piggery, leaving no part of the supply line open to contamination.

Nothing is discharged from the sites. Manure and straw become a valuable mulch, capable of regenerating the soil of 3500ha of land each year. Claire is also evaluating an unusual form of bedding in her ecoshelters. Instead of cereal straw, she has tried a waste product from wine growing for possible use in deep-litter systems. It is known as grape marc and consists of the residue of skins and seeds left after grapes are pressed for wine. Although problematic to wine growers, it is thought in Australia to have high promise as an increasingly important bedding material. In a country that has been hit by successive droughts, conventional straw has joined water in becoming a resource that is less available and more expensive.