Pork Bellies Through the Ages

Pork bellies, another agricultural market, initially hit the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1961, but the beginning of pork in America can be attributed to the "father of the pork industry": Hernando de Soto. He landed in what is now Tampa Bay, Florida, with the first 13 pigs to set foot in America; some of the worst attacks on De Soto's camps were due to the popularity of the taste of pork itself. Although De Soto died a mere 3 years later, his herd of pigs grew to over 700 head, not including the pigs that ran away and became the wild pigs you can find in such areas as Arkansas and Mississippi.

Did you know?: At one point, the Ohio city of Cincinnati was so well-known for its massive amount of commercial pig slaughtering that it was referred to as "Porkopolis"!

The word "pork" came into the English language as part of the Norman Conquest; moreover, there were more than 500 different culinary-based words brought forth by the French during that time. In China, pork is considered to be a "sweeter, cleaner" flavor than beef. Since cows are used for farm work, beef is believed to be a less appealing source of protein than pork since pigs are bred purely for their meat and carcasses.

Did you know?: Colonists in New York had grain fields aplenty; however, when semi-wild pigs began running amuck and tearing apart their crop, local officials decreed that any owned pig above 14 inches in height needed to have a ring put in it's nose!

In the 1850's, bringing your pigs from your farm in the Midwest to the markets in the East proved to be quite the daunting task. "Drovers" were people that would move around 8 miles a day, tending about 100 pigs per person, in an attempt to bring them from the farm to the market, then from the market to the slaughterhouse. With the advent of refrigerated train cars, it only made sense to keep the slaughterhouses by the farms - transporting the already butchered meat would do much to improve sale at the market as well as to include more potential buyers outside of those who could afford to buy whole pigs.

But what about the actual process the pigs go through from birth to slaughter? How can changes in these production methods effect what you see on your trading screen? Registering for our FREE report, 6 Things You Need to Know About Hogs, can help answer those questions for you - and more!