Scrutinizing Pork Price Volatility in the European Union over the Last Decade

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the factors that can influence pork prices, particularly the effects of various types of fluctuations on the volatility of pork prices in the European Union as a whole market and individual EU countries. The research material consisted of monthly time series of pork prices collected from 2009 to 2020. These data originated from the Integrated System of Agricultural Information coordinated by the Polish Ministry of Agriculture. Information on global pork production volumes is from the Food and Agriculture Organization Statistics (FAOSTAT) database. Time series of prices were described by the multiplicative model, and seasonal breakdown was performed using the Census X-11 method. The separation of the cyclical component of the trend was performed using the Hodrick–Prescott filter. In 2019, pork production in the European Union totaled 23,954 thousand tonnes, which accounted for 21.8% of global pork production. The largest producers were Germany, Spain, and France, supplying more than half of the pork to the entire European Union market. Pork prices in the EU, averaged over the 2009–2020 period were Euro (EUR) 154.63/100 kg. The highest prices for pork were recorded in Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Greece, whereas the lowest prices in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France. The breakdown of the time series for pork prices confirmed that, in the period from 2009 to 2020, pork prices exhibited considerable fluctuations of both a long-term and medium-term nature as well as short-term seasonal and irregular fluctuations. Prices were higher than average in summer (with a peak in June–August) and lower in winter (January–March). Overall, the proportions of different types of changes in pork prices were as follows: random changes—7.9%, seasonal changes—36.6%, and cyclical changes—55.5%.

Identification of cost-effective biosecurity measures to reduce Salmonella along the pork production chain

“…Despite the existence of the Common market, there is a considerable variation in pork market characteristics between Member States. Moreover, pork prices are characterized by seasonality, randomly occurring fluctuations and various short- and long-term trends ( 73 ). Therefore, respective considerations of market effects resulting from SAL occurrence on pig farms are subject to high uncertainty.…”

A new financial settlement approach to stabilize profitability of pig production

“…Of particular relevance in the context of the European swine industry are the Green Deal initiative and the related Farm to Fork strategy, which promote greener and more sustainable agriculture and food systems [ 15 ]. Arising from all these factors, the problem of the instability of financial results makes it difficult to operate farms, especially the semi-subsistent ones that dominate the Polish production structure [ 16 , 17 ].…”

Embeddedness of Hungarian pig prices in the European pork market: a volatility spillover and partial wavelet coherence study

“…In 2004, and then in 2007, 10+2 countries joined the European Union, where pig production had evolved very differently from the old MS's. As a result, structural differences between the pig industry of the old and new MS surfaced immediately (Baráth et al, 2021;Utnik-Banaś, 2022). In this study, we take a retrospective look at how the Hungarian pig price evolved after this transition period.…”

“…To grasp the drivers of fluctuation in commodity price returns has been at the forefront of scientific curiosity for a long time. The pork cycle was among the first described economic supply models in history (Szűcs and Vida, 2017), and its price variability has a well-known seasonal component (Utnik-Banaś, 2022).…”