Des Moines is full of pig people this week attending World Pork Expo. I'm going out to the Iowa State Fairgrounds to see what's new and exciting. The dry spring weather in the corn belt and the effect on grain prices is top of mind for the hog industry.
One of the gurus of the business, Randy Stoecker, sent me a presentation he gave recently to PIC, the word's largest swine breeding stock company. I've highlighted a few parts below. You can see the trends easily. Randy worked for PIC, Murphy Farms, Smithfield Foods, and other companies in his long career, and has seen the industry transition. The key message, he says, is how in only 12-15 years the industry went from small, family-sized hog farms to almost total integration with the packing industry.
