WPX 2024: Steve Meyer shares global pork outlook

Steve Meyer, chief livestock economist with Ever.Ag, spoke with The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Meyer spoke at the Expo’s Pork Academy session about the economic outlook for the US swine industry and shared highlights from his presentation. Steve, what was your key message to the audience? Things are better but still not good, and so coming off an exceedingly difficult year in 2023, saying that they are better is not saying very much, but I have been saying for a long time that one or more of three things had to happen: We had to have costs go down We had to have demand improve Or we had to cut supplies We have not cut supplies. Productivity is taking care of that even though the sow herd is smaller than it was a year ago. Demand improved dramatically in the second half of last year, but it softened some this year. The cost of production had the possibility of going down some, but that is a teetering edge as well, so we are going to have lo