Weekly Purcell Agricultural Commodity Market Report Wayne D. Purcell Agricultural and Applied Economics Virginia Tech

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Pork exports should be helped by the banning of beef in many buying countries, and I have been counseling no short hedges right now in hogs and producers should be exposed to the cash market.

Short hedges were bought back by producers who are selective hedgers on the dip by the February futures during December. The February has moved higher since then but was hit hard on Monday.

I do not expect to see the ample supplies for early 2004 be able to offset the growing demand for pork coming over from the beef situation and would be off short hedges here and watching for rallies.

I would think that packers would be looking at long hedges here and buying appeared to come back into the hog market on Tuesday.