World meat industry news

International feed tonnage has increased by a strong 3% to 1.103 billion metric tonnes of feed produced in 2018. Pig feed tonnage increased with 1% to over 293 million metric tonnes.

This is according to data from the Alltech Global Feed Survey, released on Tuesday, 29 January. The 8th edition of the annual survey includes data from 144 countries and nearly 29,605 feed mills. If we look at the last 7 years, we see a continuous rise in global total feed production, from 954.4 million metric tonnes (MT) in 2012 to 1,103 million tonnes in 2018. The last 3 years, the total volume has been over the 1 billion MT. The feed is produced in fewer feed mills, meaning that the feed mills become bigger (and smaller in total number) each year.

In 2018, the world produced 293.2 million MT of pig feed. This is nearly 1% more than 2017. Since 2012, a steady increase of pig feed production is seen, with a small dip in 2015 (Figure 1). The primary producing region for pig feed is Asia-Pacific, but this was also the only region that saw a decline in pig feed production as Mongolia, Vietnam, China, New Zealand and Japan experienced decreases.

The main Asian pig feed producing countries (where pig feed is the main type of feed in the total feed volume) are:

• Vietnam: 56% of total feed production (19.6 million MT) is pig feed
• China: 42% of total feed production (187.9 million MT) is pig feed
• Philippines: 42% of total feed production (19 million MT) is pig feed
• South Korea: 33% of total feed production (19.7 million MT) is pig feed

The main European pig feed producing countries (where pig feed is the main type of feed in the total feed volume) are:

• Spain: 48% of total feed production (34.5 million MT) is pig feed
• Russia: 42% of total feed production (39.2 million MT) is pig feed
• Germany: 39% of total feed production (25 million MT) is pig feed
• Netherlands: 37% of total feed production (13.7 million MT) is pig feed
• Italy: 25% of total feed production (14.3 million MT) is pig feed

The main North and South American pig feed producing countries (where pig feed is the main type of feed in the total feed volume) are:

• Canada: 41.9% of total feed production (21.7 million MT) is pig feed
• USA: 24.6% of total feed production (177.2 million MT) is pig feed
• Haiti: 34% of total feed production (2.4 million MT) is pig feed
• Chile: 29% of total feed production (4.8 million MT) is pig feed

From a tonnage standpoint, Europe saw the biggest growth in pig feed production, at about 2.2 million MT. Russia and Spain could nearly account for all of this, but others, including Finland, Denmark, France and Poland, also contributed. Latin America saw the greatest growth in pig feed as a percentage at 5%, with the largest growth seen in Mexico and Argentina. The pig feed production per region for 2017 and 2018 can be seen in Table 1.

The big 7 countries

The top 7 countries (the big 7) in total compound feed production are China, the US, Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico and Spain. These countries can be viewed as an indicator of the trends in agriculture. All countries showed an increase, except for Brazil, which showed a small decrease in total feed production in 2018 (68.7 million MT versus 69.9 million MT in 2017). China remains the ultimate winner with 187.9 million MT in 2018. This is 5.4% more than in 2017. Table 2 shows the trend in feed production of the big 7 between 2012 and 2018.