Despite ups and downs, sometimes sideway movements, and hog production numbers swelling in the United States there’s optimism in the hog industry.
George Matheson, himself a hog producer in Manitoba and chair of Manitoba Pork says the outlook for 2017 within the province’s pork industry is optimistic.
Moving forward in 2017, Matheson expects the attention to focus on maintaining biosecurity, improving communications with the public, addressing the ongoing challenges with regards to attracting workers and expanding hog production to meet processing capacity. Some of that processing demand is coming from outside the country, namely in the form of chilled pork going to consumers in China and Japan.
One of the big events of 2016 in Manitoba has to be the change in the provincial government from an old tired and ideologically biased NDP administration to the new more pragmatic Premier Brian Pallister-led Conservative government.
Industry sources say where the NDP government imposed a total ban on ever again expanding hog production even by just one pig in the province under then Premier Gary Doer, to one where the industry can sit down with confidence going forward the industry can expand where the situation warrants it.
“It’s the common sense approach,” said Andrew Dickson, the general manager of Manitoba Pork.
Matheson agrees saying the communication with the new government is good seemingly meeting with them quite regularly.
“It’s something that Manitoba Pork Council has always tried to attain and that is good communication with the provincial government,” he said. “We’ve had quite a few meetings already with the new Agriculture Minister Ralph Eichler, the Minister of Sustainability Cathy Cox and the Minister of Municipal Affairs Eileen Clarke. All three of these handle departments that are integral to the pork industry.”
First and foremost says Matheson they try to have the industry build more new barns in this province but the permitting process over the last few years has become increasingly complex.
The government is having its Red Tape Reduction Committee look at the permitting process for new hog barns in the province.
“Ultimately our goal is to for producers to have an easier time of it to get the construction of their new facilities under way,” he said. “Manitoba Pork feels this new government wants Manitoba to be open for business and is prepared to assist the pork industry in any way possible.”
In Saskatchewan, Florian Possberg, chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says, as North American meat and poultry production increases in response to low feed costs, the pork industry will become increasingly dependent on exports.
Possberg says, an anticipated price crash in the fall of 2016 didn’t materialize so, while the pork industry didn’t have a great year, prices in 2016 were good enough that a lot of producers made modest positive incomes.
“The big thing is that the cut-out value, the wholesale price of pork, stayed a lot higher given the quantity of pork hitting the market than what most had anticipated,” he said. “That allowed for our packing industry to enjoy very good profit margins and thus they really cranked up their slaughter capacity to accommodate the large numbers this fall. Also there is a number of large plants under construction in the U.S. to process more hogs so we don’t anticipate an issue with capacity in 2017.”
On the other hand, several years of modest feed prices is showing up in record amounts of poultry, pork, beef all come onto the market place at the same time.
“There’s going to be more additional meat in North America than our consumers here can handle so we’re really going to depend on export markets for all our meat commodities to stay in a positive state,” said Possberg. “Southeast Asia, China and the Philippines were quite strong in 2016 due to shortages in 2015 and 2016 but producers there have increased production so the big question remains whether we can maintain our export numbers and even increase them going forward.” •
— By Harry Siemens
