The European Union still cannot predict how much pork prices will go up because of uncertainties on the global market, but a price shock is expected, the Croatian Chamber of Agriculture (HPK) said on Tuesday.

It said prices are expected to increase soon for the sake of survival of the sector, given that input prices have sharply increased globally and the production at present is untenable.

There are fears that the Russia-Ukraine war will further impact the market through increased costs of animal feed and prices of energy, fuel and other inputs, the HPK said in a statement from a meeting of the the European Commission’s Civil Dialogue Group on Animal Products.

EU pork prices began to recover at the end of 2021 and stronger increases are expected at the end of the first and the start of the second quarter in 2022, the HPK said, adding that prices are projected to rise by about 13 per cent in 2022 compared with 2021.

The meeting concluded that the sector’s future was highly uncertain and challenging to all producers. The task force of COPA-COGECA, the strongest interest group for European farmers, is meeting next week to discuss measures to alleviate the situation in the sector.

Croatians annually consume about 50 kg of pork per capita

In Croatia, pig farming has an important share in the value of agricultural production, accounting for 25 per cent in 2020. Croatians annually consume about 50 kg of pork per capita, far more than any other type of meat.

The level of self-sufficiency of own pork production is around 65 per cent and a further decrease is expected because of the present trends.

Although pork production rose by 3.7 per cent in 2020 year on year, the number of sows fell from 99,000 to 88,000 and the number of gilts from 26,000 to 24,000. This shows that a large part of pig farming in Croatia depends on imports of live animals.

In 2020, compared with 2019, imports of piglets increased from 143,110 to 183,55, imports of pigs rose from 13,346 to 24,061 and imports of fattened pigs from 46 to 18,079. Official data for 2021 has not been published yet, but it is expected that the number of pigs has declined by about 2 per cent, the HPK said.