5 July 2022

4 minute read

By: Kyle Baldwin

Spencer Long, with Genesus Genetics, spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the 2022 World Pork Expo held in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Long showcased the Genesus World Mega Producer listing for 2022.

“The World Mega Producer is something that's been happening for a few years that Genesus has been a part of and put on. It gives a benchmark to show mega producers that have over 100,000 sows in the world market,” Long said. “The number this year is right around a quarter of the total sows in the world. What we see is that the market is very challenged in many parts of the world right now,” he said.

The World Mega Producer list gives pork producers a rough idea of just how large the largest swine operations are and how they are impacted by the current market climate.

“There was a little bit of movement on this year's numbers that went a little bit higher, but overall, you had a lot of companies that were down significantly versus past years. And so that's obviously a reflection on what's going on,” he stated.

Long continues to describe how Genesus collects the data for the listing.

“The US numbers are from the 2021 Successful Farming Top 40 Producers - any of those with over 100,000 sows, we put on the list. For the other numbers, we call the companies and ask them what their total sow numbers are. Obviously, we can't do a full audit of what they say, but we go off what they tell us, and we take them for their word,” Long explained. “It's very interesting to see as this is a quarter of the total sows in the world. It really shows the large scale of how many of these companies there are in the world and how big of a global market it truly is,” he said.

In addition to seeing the market climate, Long speaks of how it reflects disease pressures on the swine industry.

“As most American producers know, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) 1-4-4 has been absolutely devastating, and you're seeing a lot of the world mega producers feeling the brunt of that too. African swine fever (ASF) in China has been running rampant, and we see the attrition of the market price collapsing the way that it has in so many markets. We see parts of Europe that show sow numbers could be down 20% to 30% in some countries,” Long described. “There's not a lot of European companies on here, so that's not going to be reflected, but if you look at total sows in the world, we should have a pretty strong price for quite a while because there really aren't a lot of pigs out there from what we see,” he deduced.

Furthermore, the World Mega Producer Listing allows producers to view the market outside their own country and learn about companies in other pig growing regions.

“It gives this benchmark to show what's going on because when you're in one specific market, like the US market, you might not know what's really going on in the rest of the world. That's why we like to put this out to give a rough idea to people saying, it is a huge world out there and there are a lot of massive companies that are out there. Most people have never heard of them, so it gives an explanation of who the companies are, when they were founded and what they do,” Long said.

Ultimately, Long explains the goal of providing the World Mega Producer Listing for producers around the world.

“I think everybody who's in the swine industry is interested to be in the pork industry, and people want to be around positivity. So, we try to put things out there that people can get behind and look at and go, 'that's very interesting.' And it keeps us steered in the right direction,” he said. “It’s a big world out there. It's been very challenging for the last few years for so many in this world. We were really proud to put this out. We think it's something that is unique and gives people a different perspective on what's going on in the world,” he concluded.