Pork: Stocks
You cannot store a live hog, but frozen bellies last a year
What this tab covers How much is left and how much is held. For minerals and energy: reserves, current output, years of supply and recycling for the top five countries. For farm commodities: production, ending stocks and stocks-to-use for the top five producers (USDA, October 2026). It also covers inventories and stockpiles.Top five producers: production and stocks (USDA, 2026)
| Country | Production | Share | Ending stocks | Stocks-to-use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 59,680 | 49.5% | 0 | 0% |
| European Union | 22,120 | 18.3% | 0 | 0% |
| United States | 12,540 | 10.4% | 204 | 1.6% |
| Brazil | 5,000 | 4.1% | 0 | 0% |
| Vietnam | 4,055 | 3.4% | 0 | 0% |
| World | 120,700 | 100% | 903 | 0.8% |
Stockholding and policy
Pork is not recycled. The working stock is the breeding herd: China had 39.61 million breeding sows at end-2025 (Muyuan 2025 annual report) and the world held 962 million pigs in 2024 (FAOSTAT). China keeps a state frozen pork reserve that it buys into when prices slump and releases when they spike. US cold-storage pork stocks are forecast at 450 million lb at end-2026, about 2% of annual use of 21.7 billion lb (WASDE, Oct 2026). India has no pork stockholding policy.
Live hogs cannot be stockpiled, but frozen pork can. Frozen bellies keep up to a year, which once made them a futures underlying (Geman, pdf p. 172). The USDA's monthly cold-storage report and quarterly Hogs and Pigs Report are the key US supply signals. China keeps a state frozen pork reserve, buying when prices slump and releasing when they spike. The sow herd is the real capital stock: once sows are culled, supply shrinks for many months (Morgan, pdf p. 231).