IARN — The National Pork Board has been reviewing the latest monthly U.S. pork export data, which shows a good start for 2021, although numbers are down slightly year/year.
According to Clay Eastwood – National Pork Board’s director of international marketing – U.S. pork exports in January showed a 9% volume decrease and a 13% decrease in value. Eastwood reminds producers that the overall growth rate for exports to China is strong, with a value of over $173 million.
“Some other positive points, though, despite the continued 25 percent retaliatory duty on U.S. pork and pork variety meats going into China, one of the really positive pieces that we saw there was that variety meats were actually up significantly compared to a year ago. So, we saw on the pork variety meet front, there’s a good bit of optimism and movement there so that’s pretty positive.”
Eastwood says Japan is also a leading market, which is critical to overall U.S. pork exports.
“Exports to Japan open 2021 on a pretty positive note as well increasing both in volume and value. We’ve seen that the demand for chilled U.S. pork remains really strong in Japan, specifically in the retail sector, and we’ve been able to reclaim quite a bit of that market share, in chilled pork and also for ground seasoned pork, so really, really positive story there for Japan.”
Eastwood expects more challenges for pork exports in 2021, but U.S. pork has the chance to help fill global demand.
“There are certainly challenges ahead and 2021. 2020 was a tough year, I’m in terms of COVID and all the challenges that that presented but, so 2021 is not going to be without some of those challenges as well. But I think that if we can get past some of these logistical and labor issues and some of the issues we’ve seen on the west coast in terms of ports and containers, I think that there’s a real opportunity for U.S. pork to help fill the demand for protein around the world. And a lot of what we’ve seen in from our partners at USMEF and what they’re projecting is that if we can get past some of these challenges that there’s good recovery and good demand, and so I think we really have an opportunity to help fill that going forward.”
Details about the National Pork Board export programs can be found on www.porkcheckoff.org.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
