An animal disease half a world away is already showing its
effects to Georgia hog
farmers.

“There’s a great potential for U.S. pork exports to increase
dramatically because of the
Taiwan health problems,” said John McKissick, a livestock
economist with the
University of Georgia Extension Service.

The 14 million-head Taiwanese swine herd is under quarantine
because of
foot-and-mouth disease. That prevents any farmer in the country
from exporting live
hogs or pork products. Taiwan supplies about half of Japan’s
demand for pork.

U.S. farmers have a chance to fill that void.

“If we were able to fill 5 percent of our production by
exporting (to Japan), that would
increase our prices by about $4 per hundredweight,” McKissick
said.

The increase could mean an extra $10 per hog for
farmers. “That’s a significant
number to add to what appeared to be an already profitable price
for most Georgia hog
producers,” McKissick said.

Of the U.S. hog herd, 5 percent is about 4.5 million hogs. On
March 1, Georgia’s hog
herd was pegged at 800,000 head, down 11 percent from a year
ago. McKissick puts
the value of the herd at $66 million at any one time. Hogs
brought the state’s farmers
$145 million during 1995.

Georgia hog farmers are looking forward to one of their first
profitable years since the
early ’90s. Increasing world demand, fewer hogs in production
and dropping farm and
feed costs are brightening their profit picture.

“With the added increase in exports to fill the loss from Taiwan
disease problems, we
would expect to have an even more profitable situation,”
McKissick said.

U.S. hog farmers don’t have to contend with foot-and-mouth
disease. McKissick said
efforts to control the disease eliminated it in U.S. hogs in the
mid-1940s.

As prices to farmers rise, retail prices are likely to climb,
too. “We would expect retail
prices to go up some,” he said. “But there is a very large
margin between wholesale
prices and retail prices.”

That difference could buffer a retail price hike. As wholesale
prices fell over the past
few months, retail prices didn’t drop the same amount, McKissick
said. “So prices at
the grocery store probably won’t reflect the entire price
increase farmers will see.”

McKissick expects farmers will ride the Taiwan-induced price
wave for a year at least.

“It does appear the quarantine will last a relatively long
period — at least a year and
perhaps longer,” he said. “Even if the quarantine is lifted,
Taiwan will have a hard
time recovering their pork export business.”