Decline in Pork

In Chicago, hog prices dipped to their lowest level in years: $15.50 per 100 Ibs., down 75-c- from the first part of the week and nearly $10 below the peak prices paid a year earlier. As the price of live hogs fell, supermarkets slashed prices of pork products. Hams sold at 49-c- per lb., 12-c- below last year; sausage at 45-c-, down 2O-c-; center-cut pork chops at 79-c-, against 99-c- a year ago.

The immediate cause of the price break was a sharp 12% rise in the size of the 1959 spring pig crop. Farmers had been encouraged to increase farrowings, because corn was plentiful and cheap. The Administration's new program of guaranteeing corn prices at $1.12 per bu., without limitation on corn acreage, has resulted in a huge crop increase. This year farmers will grow 4.2 billion bushels of corn, up from 1958's record 3.8 billion-bushel crop and nearly a billion above the ten-year average of 3.3 billion bushels.

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