Both were the same as pre-release trade expectations. The industry is gaining in efficiency, but not that fast. Normally, the breeding herd inventory is looked at as a fairly solid number and farrowing intentions are taken with a grain of salt. For this report, I'm reversing my skepticism. My take on the numbers is that the farrowing intentions look very reasonable.
Producers have every reason to want to expand their production.
This said, I do not think the June 1 breeding herd number, 6.95 million head, is unreasonably low. In 1996, 2.761 million litters were farrowed during June, July and August. In June-August of 1995, the utilization rate was 0.414. It was 0.411 for the summer of 1994 and 0.406 in 1993. The last time fewer litters were farrowed per animal in the June breeding inventory was in 1984 when the utilization rate was 0.399.