Mark Ferguson, general manager of Sask Pork, said creating a Canadian Pork Promotion and Research Agency is among the pork sector’s more important accomplishments during 2020. 
Late in 2020, Canada’s Agriculture Minister announced the creation of the CPPRA to manage the collection and use of a levy to promote pork’s marketing and production, develop new markets for producers, and support research activities. 
Ferguson said the agency is something the Canadian pork sector worked toward for some time and will help level the playing field with the United States. 
The federal government proclaimed with a proposal to create the PRA established in March in the Canada Gazette Part one. A levy on imported hogs and pork will fund the agency much like the Beef Promotion Research Agency. These levies could generate somewhere around two million annually in new research funding for the entire Canadian pork sector’s collective benefit. 
The U.S. currently collects a levy on imported pork and hogs and this gives a reciprocal levy to the Canadian industry work on research, promotion and farm programs. 
In other thoughts Ferguson said the COVID-19 pandemic led the way among essential happenings in the pig industry but other things occurred too.  
“Developments of our pricing formulas and keeping swine diseases out of Saskatchewan would be another very positive thing this year.”  
He is proud of how the farms and processors and the different supporting businesses and people that make the industry work across western Canada handled the COVID-19 pandemic and fallout situation. The hog industry is famous for just-in-time delivery, probably one of the first businesses that worked this way. The industry designed producer barns to hold a maximum number of hogs.  
“There isn’t a lot of extra room to park hogs if you can’t market the hogs in a given week.”  
The COVID-19 impacted the processing and the ability to deliver hogs, usually a vital part of the industry moving pigs through the system. 
In the U.S., early in the pandemic, some processors closed temporarily due to COVID-19 among the workers resulting in a glut of hogs and many did not make it to market backed up in barns. And at the same time, the demand shifted with foodservice restaurants closing or operating at reduced capacity throughout the spring and summer and on to today. That meant lower demand for pork and an increased supply depressing prices. The farms faced that scenario over the spring and summer months and probably had the most significant impact.  
In Canada, processors early on established some very successful protocols to keep the disease from entering and spreading in their facilities. And so the disruption that occurred in the U.S. didn’t repeat itself in Western Canada yet. Yes, a few isolated outbreaks, but it didn’t shut down the industry. Things like split shifts and staggered break times, masking, barriers between workers, and social distancing at all times, were some of the measures taken in these plants. Farms also implemented the same prevention strategies to prevent the spread within barns. 
The industry in Western Canada, successful at keeping COVID-19 limited in our barns and our processing facilities, is a real success story. 

Ferguson said it’s essential the critical swine diseases, PED and African Swine Fever don’t gain a foothold in the country or the province. Not only does a disease like ASF impact production, but it also affects the ability to market pork around the world. For example, when other countries contract ASF, there is market disruption. Even when establishing zoning, certain countries don’t recognize it right away, and the best way to make sure this doesn’t happen here is to keep it out of the country.  
On pork prices, Ferguson said the divergence of pork prices and hog prices where pork prices continue to increase in value while hog prices remain stagnant, and that spread is becoming a significant concern. The industry keeps looking at different ways to price hogs to bring the cut-out value into these pricing formulas and estimate the type of benefit for farms.  
“We think it reduces the volatility in the markets, and it may provide a small boost in prices in the future if we move to that.”  •
— By Harry Siemens