The Chinese market is getting a lot of attention from hog market analysts recently, according the director of risk management with h@ms Marketing Services.

Tyler Fulton says that's because of the sheer potential in demand for pork in China.

"China's short of pork a little bit right now, and so prices have moved up, I think about 30 to 40 per cent over year ago prices, which were fairly good to begin with," he says, "so they're in the market for a lot of pork. So consequently, because of the sheer size of that market and the relative competitiveness of U.S. or Canadian pork, there's perceived to be a great opportunity to move a lot of pork into there."

Fulton says there is this potential, and we could likely see a doubling of pork volumes headed to China. But, countries like Mexico and Japan are bigger players in the export market, and he thinks it will be important to sustain those market relationships in order to stay ahead.

With the hogs and pigs report coming out next week, it's even more important to be thinking about the export markets.

"I generally think that there's an expectation we're going to be looking at three per cent more pigs," Fulton says ahead of the report. "If it stays that or less than three, I think the market will generally deal with it reasonably well, in that it won't start significantly discounting the third and fourth quarter prices. However, in order to maintain levels that we're already seeing in that time frame, I think we're going to have to see some improvement in the export flow."

While there's always a lot of attention put on the hogs and pigs report, Fulton says you can't look at the report in a vaccuum. And right now, he says our exports markets are looking uncertain.