THE Pork Economist

Cindy Zimmerman

Dr. Glenn Grimes with the University of Missouri has been the definitive voice for the livestock industry as far as economics goes for five decades. He is here at World Pork Expo giving his views on the current state of the industry and what producers can expect and do to survive the next 18 months or so.

World Pork Expo 2008 Glenn Grimes“The objective should be to minimize losses rather than maximize profits in the next 12-18 months,” he says. To do that, he recommends the futures markets. “For the first time in my experience, the futures market has offered a much better opportunity to minimize losses than ever before.”

He also says that it will be important for producers to maximize feed efficiency and he addressed the weather concerns that are the big topic of discussion here as fields are covered in standing water from a series of storms. “This weather is too similar to 1993 to make me feel comfortable as to what it may do to the corn crop this year. That’s the last real small corn crop that we had,” said Grimes. Ten billion bushels or less he says could stop or slow down the production of ethanol, however he emphasizes, “We will not run out of corn.”

Listen to the Grimes interview here: wpx08-grimes.mp3

Or download here:
Listen To MP3Glenn Grimes Interview (9 min MP3)

World Pork Expo Photo Album

AgWired coverage of World Pork Expo is sponsored by:
Novus

Audio, Corn, Ethanol, Novus International, Pork, World Pork Expo