PIG PRICE CYCLES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 305, 11 December 1929, Page 11

PIG PRICE CYCLES

THEORY EXPLAINING VARIATIONS. In an article in a recent issue of the "Live Stock Journal,” Professor Watson referred to the conclusions of Wentworth, an American investigator, to the effect that prices of all kinds of live stock tended to go in cycles. It was contended that wuen prices were good people started breeding and the numbers increased until they reached the point when prices fell, when people stopped breeding and prices went lower. It seemed too simple to be true, but Wentworth did produce pretty sound evidence that there was a kind of period between high prices, higher prices, and then low prices, followed again by high. It was natural that the slow breeding types of animals would have a longer cycle than the quick breeding sorts, and it was found in Wentworth’s figures that in the case of cattle the cycle was fourteen or fifteen years, sheep had a cycle of ten years, and iu the case of pigs the cycle was about four and a half years. If they took the trouble to look over the figures for England a four-and-half year cycle did fit the situation in a remarkable way. Two years up and two years down was not very far from the mark with regard to pigs, according to those investigations in America. It was undoubtedly a fact that a certain number of people got disgusted with pigs after a year or so of bad prices, and the lessons they had to draw from the price cycles was that they must not get disgusted because prices were low, that was the wrong time to get disgusted. The normal number of breeding sows in England was 320,000. In 1927 sows numbered 392,000, in 1928 it was 380,000, and in 1929 only 306,000. If history was going to repeat itself, therefore, the price of pigs was going to hold to the profitable it was to-day for about fifteen months.