Macroeconomics Price Surges, Missing Data, and the Market Outlook While monthly food prices have only recently seen an increase from where they were a year ago, the data should come with a huge caveat. The driver of the surge from the second half of 2019 through the second half of 2020 were live hog and pork prices. With their collapse here in the first half of 2021, the aggregate average fell into negative territory before a modest uptick in May. The fact that pork prices account for about 40 to 50 percent of the calculated basket has hidden the runup in other prices. Moreover, with hog producers having such high operating margins for that same period, the rapidly rising feed prices were often absorbed. The impact of winter diseases, fr...

TAGS – Feed Grains, Soy & Oilseeds, Livestock, China