World pork output fueled by extra productivity

Pig International's exclusive analysis discusses recent trendsin world pork production alongside projections that the future brings furtheroutput growth.

Compared with the volume that the world has produced in 2014, we could be looking at more than a 15.5 percent increase in the global output of pork by the year 2023.

That is one of the principal indications from a new series of baseline projections produced by economists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Their projections are founded on an assumption of steady global economic growth and of a slowing in the rate at which the world human population will grow. The economists also consider that feed costs will trend lower, giving improved profitability for livestock producers and therefore providing the economic incentive for more meat production.

The latest annual OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook also looks ahead to 2023. Its view is more conservative, suggesting a pork tonnage increase of between 10.5 percent and 11 percent by that time. To put some numbers to its expectations, it said 116.9 million metric tons of pigmeat will have been produced worldwide in 2014, up from 115.4 million tons in 2013, and that the total for 2023 may rise to almost 129.5 million tons.

Global production growth

For Pig International’s own exclusive world market survey, we have used those indicators of past and future tonnages to prepare the accompanying Chart 1. It illustrates a global production growth of over 24 percent between 1994 and 2004, slowing only slightly to about 21 percent between 2004 and 2014. An increase of no more than 11 percent in world output between 2014 and 2023 would therefore represent a significant slowdown compared with past trends, although such an expansion would still be adding more than 12.5 million metric tons to the size of the pork market worldwide.

In Chart 2 we present how the world regions contributed to the global total for pork in 2013. It confirms the Asia-Pacific region as still leading with more than half of all production. Europe including Russia comes second for size, but it produced less than half the amount from Asia-Pacific countries. Europe’s 23 percent market share is over twice that from North America, which in turn produced almost double the tonnage from Latin America with the Caribbean -- and that region had twice the output of the nations of Africa.

Table 1 offers an insight into the production patterns over the period 2004 to 2013, for the countries that rank currently as the top 20 in the world for the amount of pork they produce annually. We calculate that these Top 20 players added over 15.5 percent to their combined output during the 10 years, while global pork production grew by over 19.5 percent. Even so, their approximate share of the world total slipped back only from 91 percent in 2004 to 88 percent in 2013.

Chart 3 traces the evolution of national volumes over the same period for the 10 largest producers excluding China, to show their relatively steady growth as well as the changing ranks of some names lower down the list.

Global sow productivity

But there is more information in the data compiled exclusively by Pig International for the number of breeding sows in each country. Table 2 sets out the sow numbers between 2004 and 2013 for the 30 countries with the largest pig breeding inventories. It confirms that although world pork production continues to rise, the size of the breeding herd in the major producing countries is staying relatively unchanged or even has reduced.

This particular 10-year trend emphasizes a wider observation that sow productivity is improving everywhere. In Chart 4, we have examined how sow numbers in the Top 30 countries for breeding inventory have evolved by comparison with the pattern of global pork production volumes since 2000.

The widening gap demonstrates that more pigs are being produced per sow per year. Even if disease issues at present are limiting the number of pigs marketed in some places, the underlying productivity increases will act as an inbuilt driver for further growth in the amount of pork that will be produced globally.

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