Dan Halstrom, CEO of the US Meat Export Federation, spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association conference in Orlando, Florida, USA about pork exports.

Editor's note: While at the NCBA's 2024 CattleCon conference, I had the chance to speak to Dan Halstrom about US efforts for beef and pork exports. To hear about beef exports, click here.   

Tell us about US pork exports in 2023 and your expectations for 2024, amid the economic challenges that US producers face.

On the international side, the export side of pork for the last year is one of the success stories. We're seeing broad-based growth throughout the world. When we get December data here in about a week, it's going to turn out to be a new record value for exports roughly $8.1 to $8.2 billion in sales. And it's being led by Mexico, who set a record in October for the year. But it doesn't stop with Mexico, the rest of Latin America and Central America, in particular, places like Colombia and South America are really booming. That's really the success, but you look at Asia as well, while they started slow in the first half of the year, during the last half of the year, they were really robust. So we have a lot of good momentum in pork going into 2024.

What opportunity markets do you see, given some of the economic issues around the world?

There are plenty of headwinds like the exchange rate especially in Asia, the strong US dollar which makes our prices more expensive in local currency, and concerns about inflation and interest rates globally. But the bottom line is that demand is still pretty darn good. In fact, in some places, it's record breaking. This is kind of a wave that we're riding the last couple of years, but the momentum the last half of the year really was monumental.

Our traditionally large markets like Korea and Japan, last year, were actually down just slightly on pork, so we've set records without our two largest markets. This is a good sign that the diversification model is working. China was down slightly, so that’s three of your four largest markets were down. But as I said, Mexico had a huge year, and southeast Asia, places like the Philippines also had a big year. Exports into Australia and New Zealand were record breaking this year. So there are a lot of markets that we don't talk a lot about that had really big years. Taiwan is another one that’s growing on the pork side. So we're extremely excited about the broad-base momentum.

Let’s talk a little bit about when you're selling into a market. You’re not selling the whole pork carcass, right?

Exactly, I like to think – as an industry, we're working in tandem to put the right cut in the right market that maximizes value. No one takes the set. Some markets like China are big for variety meats, like pork stomachs and tongues, etc. A market like Mexico is big for the ham, but also we have loins growing there. In Japan, it's a lot of tenderloins, loins and shoulders. So that's the beauty - there's plenty of options to maximize the carcass. 

We know the US pork industry is struggling, but exports seem to be a real bright spot?

They really are. The other thing that's going to happen when we get those December stats is more than likely we're going to be at a new record on a value per head payback from exports. Right now it's a little over $63 per head, but we need to keep pushing because with the growing middle class globally, there's an opportunity to expand it further. That's really what we're focused on.