Usage of marketing contracts tied to pork futures prices are correlated, and tend to increase, with the size of the producer.
[4] In addition, hog producers often trade pork futures contracts directly as part of a risk management program.
Its weighting in these commodity indices give Lean Hog futures prices non-trivial influence on returns on a wide range of investment funds and portfolios.
Conversely, traders and investors have become non-trivial participants in the market for Lean Hog futures.
These commodities share many fundamental demand and supply risks, such long feeding periods, weather, feed prices, and consumer sentiment toward meat consumption, which makes grouping them together useful for commercial discussions about both the commodities and their futures contracts.