According to the USDA Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report, Iowa has reached a new record inventory of 22.4 million, which is up 7% from this time last year. The Iowa breeding inventory remained constant at about 1.03 million, while the market inventory increased 8% since December 2015.

North Carolina and Minnesota housed the second and third highest number of hogs and pigs at 9.3 and 8.3 million, respectively. These states both saw slight increases in inventories since last year with a growth of 4% in North Carolina and 2% in Minnesota. The United States inventory also increased 4% from last year bringing the U.S. hogs and pigs total to 71.5 million.

Geographic consolidation of the hog industry – Since 2010 there has been a net increase of 6.5 million market hogs to the December inventory.  States that “added hogs” actually added 7.26 million head and states that have lost market hog inventory have lost 0.76 million head.  Of the states that have “added market hogs,” 5 states account for 77% of the additional market hog inventory with Iowa alone accounting for more than 45% of the increase in market hog capacity since 2010.

For breeding sows, there has been a net increase since 2010 of 224,000 head. Gaining states added 304,000 head and losing states lost a net 80,000 sows.  The top 6 “gaining states” accounting for 73% of the gain since 2010 are: Missouri with 19% of the additional sows, Illinois with 14.5%, Texas with 12%, and Nebraska, North Carolina and Oklahoma each with 10% of the additional sows.