Login to Read World pork production is back on track to set new
records for its annual volume after a period of pauses in
growth. On figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations, the quantity of pork produced
globally reached around 106.5 million metric tons in 2009 and
seems likely to total between 108.5-109 million tons this year.
See in our accompanying Figure 1 how these estimates and
forecasts fit with the pattern seen since 1990. The peak output
in any year had been 103.5 million tons in 2005, before the new
high recorded in 2009. But see also Figure 2, extracted from a
bulletin by the foreign agricultural service of the United
States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It confirms the
contrasting trends that are being observed between annual
production in China, as the world’s largest single pork-
producing country, and all other producers globally. Our data
analysis last year had blamed the turmoil then occurring in
world economies as complicating any attempt to forecast