In its annual agricultural report published today, the EU Commission expects that pork exports could rise to 4 million tons in 2022. The actual export volume depends on the rebuilding of the pig population in China. Last year, 2.7 million tons of pork were exported from the EU.
Exports could then fall to 3.4 million tons by 2030, which would still be significantly more than before the Chinese ASF crisis.
Pig prices will remain high until the pig herd in China is rebuilt and/or how much the competitors on the global market: USA, Brazil and Canada can expand their meat production.
A major uncertainty for the EU, however, is whether Europe's largest pork-producing countries: Germany, Spain, Denmark and France will also be hit by African Swine Fever (ASF). In Europe, ASF has already broken out in ten countries, including Bulgaria and Romania.
However, a price collapse in the EU would not increase our meat consumption. Consumer demand has been shifting towards poultry meat, which is considered healthier, for some time now anyway. For precisely this reason, the demand for protein crops is also increasing in the EU. According to the EU Commission's estimates, the EU area under pulses will increase to 2.5 million hectares in 2030. The current figure is 1.5 million hectares. This includes soybean cultivation, which currently stands at 1 million hectares and could reach 1.3 million hectares in 2030.
Protein crops could also benefit from the increasing demand for dairy products, as hardly any genetically modified oil plants are cultivated in the EU. This could also limit the import of GMO soybeans from America. Rapeseed would be the largest oilseed in the EU, partly because it has proven to be a positive crop in crop rotation.
Source
HANSA Terminhandel
