The Feed cost averaged around $5.8 Mx/Kg (US$ 0.20/lb.) and the live slaughter price averaged $21.5 Mx (US$0.75/lb.), starting in January with $25.5 Mx/Kg (US$0.89/lb.) and dropped in March and April to $16.00 Mx/Kg (US$0.56/lb.).

The top 10 per cent pig producers’ averaged profits per slaughter pig around $115 Mx/Kg (US$4.08/lb.); the top 25 per cent were almost $80 Mx/Kg (US$2.72/lb.); the average was around breakeven point and the bottom 25 per cent lost $300 to $400 Mx (US$ 23.00 to $30.00) per animal slaughtered.

Due to these reasons the National Mexican Pig Industry will suffer changes during 2013. Fundamentally the country will maintain the sow herd inventory but this will move to less hands. The integrated companies will continue with their growing plans and will buy the inventory from those who are deciding to leave their businesses.

The expectations for the pork industry in 2013 will be a little better than the previous year, even though this will not be quite what they are expecting. They need to understand that the pig industry’s golden years will never come back, so they need to improve their performance, fundamentally with better admin practices, performance improvement and being part of an integrated complex.

The affiliates of the integrated complexes realized the difficulties that happened during 2012, but they got substantive profits during this year. They also know the minimal production performance they need to achieve in order to have a profitable business. Up to now they cannot expect to sell less than 24 pigs per sow per year, FCR below 2.8 and 110 Kg (242 pounds) per slaughtered pig. Utilizing better genetics they can achieve much more than what they are realizing until now.