The hog production industry has seen major impacts throughout this pandemic; with Smithfield temporarily closing in Monmouth and other production plants shutting their doors across the country. Illinois Farm Bureau Vice President Brian Duncan calls the impact a disaster to Illinois growers:
“I’ve used the word disaster, but I have used that word so often. It has been a huge impact on the growers here because the growers in Illinois don’t just ship to the plants in Illinois. I have to say we were very fortunate that the JBS plant in Beardstown stayed open. If that had gone down, I don’t know what would have happened to us,” says Duncan.
Duncan states hogs remain backed up. Producers are double stocking buildings and finding any other places to keep their hogs until they go to market.
As travel increases for the summer, gas prices have elevated causing a rebound to ethanol production after a collapse related to the pandemic and the oil price war. Duncan discusses two possible scenarios as to what the back side will look like in the immediate future:
“As people become comfortable working from home, will we see fewer people commuting and does the overall demand for gasoline go down or do we see people stay away from public transportation, airplanes, and trains and ride sharing and all those things that we see people actually drive more going forward,” Duncan states.
Duncan says ethanol production does face some challenges long term as a shift to electric vehicles is being seen.
