Latest Hog and Pig Report Shows Increased Supply

Nelson: So, I think overall, this was a bearish report. The total inventory of hogs and pigs on June 1st came in at 75.1 million. Now, this is up about one percent or 390,000 head from the last quarterly report. You know, this is pretty significant, because this is the highest inventory since June 1st of 2020.

Nelson: We've got cash hogs running around $106 per hundredweight. That's a really solid price for this time of year, and one of the things that's doing this is we're finding some demand. So, even though we've got some bearish news in this report that our hog numbers are up, we've also got some really supportive demand coming in. Seeing some increased demand in the pork sector as a substitute for these record-high beef prices is kind of interesting.

Nelson: But if we take a look at like our 4th of July cookout survey, we had pork chops down around four percent, so we saw some relief at the retail level from that. But as we kind of look moving forward, if we have stronger demand, we could see things pick back up a little bit. And that could provide some competition amongst our different meat protein sources.