Despite various travel bans and other restrictions, foreign markets still have a large number of consumers who want American pork and beef.
Clay Eastwood is Director of International Marketing for the National Pork Board. She says the most recent export numbers for American pork include almost record-setting amounts.
“January was the second-highest export month in history as we exported 515 million pounds of pork,” Eastwood says. “Of that number, 150 million pounds of pork went to China.”
The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier says those numbers were posted ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic that hit China and other Asian countries before spreading to the rest of the globe.
Eastwood says pork production was five percent higher in 2019, with early data showing that number may climb higher this year.
Pork is continuing to find solid overseas demand in traditional trading partners like Mexico and Japan.
Other nations like Australia and New Zealand are buying more pork than in recent years.
Demand for U.S. pork is also higher in both Central and South America.
As COVID-19 cases continue to drop in China, Eastwood expects that market to get even stronger through 2020.
