Farmscape for September 30, 2020

The Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services suggests, while it's difficult to gauge right now, demand for pork will play a key role in influencing live hog markets as we move through the final quarter of 2020.
North American live hog markets have improved dramatically over the past two months.
Tyler Fulton, the Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services, says, while COVID-19 has altered typical consumption patterns creating a great deal of uncertainty, demand for pork remains strong.

Clip-Tyler Fulton-HAMS Marketing Services:
It's a tough thing to wrap your head around.
We've seen a major disruption in the flow of consumption, far less food service activity but far more at home consumption of pork and that hasn't been the predominant means by which consumers in North America have consumed pork.
So things are being turned over and so then there's going to be the added layer of what's termed the second wave of COVID-19 and whether or not that has as significant an impact on food service demand as what it did in the spring.
That's an obvious concern and one that would be worked into pricing as well.
On the export side, product is still moving in huge numbers to China where we're easily getting set up, despite some delays and some periods where things were slow, we're setting up to have probably record numbers into China this year and it's simply because African Swine Fever continues to result in a protein deficit area in China and so they're bringing in pork that is still reasonably priced for that market.

Fulton acknowledges slaughter capacity will be tight so any disruptions on the processing side could throw a wrench into cash pricing but right now there's optimism that things will move smoothly.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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