This might hurt – and some will feel it more than others.
There is no question that the pricing model on which commercial hogs are sold is broken. But the benefits available from an aggressive reset now underway in Alberta will outweigh any pain the industry may feel, says the man leading the charge.
In the nearly four years since he was hired as general manager of Western Hog Exchange, Brent Bushell has taken a not-for-profit agency that had been assembling hogs for one large plant and flipped it onto its ear.
In a recent interview with Prairie Hog Country, Bushell said his goal is to drive a change that will force processors to split the cut-out with producers – both profits and losses – to create a pricing scheme that is fair for everyone. If a plant owner can’t stomach the change, Bushell said his group is prepared to buy and run the plant itself, at 10 cents on the dollar.
Despite the high value and marketability of their hogs, Alberta producers contracting with local processors continue to lose an average of $11.72 per head, says Bushell.
He has heard the repeated rhetoric about a pricing model so outdated that the entire industry faces potential collapse across Western Canada. At every turn in the last two decades, leaders have told their fellow producers that the pricing model needs to change; that the price paid to producers should be based on the cut-out rather than on the cash price in the United States; that processors and producers should work together, sharing the load as well as the profits.
So, after an overhaul of WHE itself, Bushell and his team approached producers with a new idea: Instead of renewing your contracts with the processors, let us market your hogs directly to the highest bidder.
Selling the assembly yards alone netted enough income that WHE can operate for up to 10 years without any additional revenue, says Bushell. However, he believes Western Canada’s pricing model needs to turn around much sooner than that, estimating that the industry here is within three years of collapse.
His leverage with the processing companies is achieved through the number of hogs WHE has diverted from processor agreements, which he estimates will reach 8,500 per week as current contracts expire. The plants that held those contracts can still buy the pigs, but only if they’re willing to pay the prices, says Bushell. Otherwise, those animals can go to someone who will.
Since last spring, when he drew a line across the carpet for the WHE’s shareholders and directors, Bushell has seen significant improvements – as much as $110,000 extra over 20 loads – on the price of hogs marketed through his office.
“That’s the difference between staying in the game or being pushed out,” said Bushell.
He points out that barley-fed hogs from Western Canada fetch premium prices in Japan, vastly improving profits for the processors without putting one extra dime in the pockets of the producers who raised them. Depending on the results of trade negotiations between the United States and China, North America’s hog industry may see additional benefits arise through supplying a foreign market that has been devastated with losses to African Swine Fever, says Bushell.
Processors need to share those benefits with the people who are growing their hogs, he says.
What those processors may lose in pure profit will be more than compensated through assurances of improved supplies through a healthier and more vibrant industry, he says. Producers will be more profitable; financiers will be more willing to support expansions and new construction, and a dwindling sow herd will recover and grow.

Increased investment in the sow herd will bring new business to suppliers in an industry that has continued to shrink as barn doors close.
Bushell says the efforts by large processors to run their own hog farms will not resolve their supply issues, because rural municipalities will not approve large, corporate-run barns. Independent farms that the processors have purchased do not run as efficiently as those that are run by farmer owners. Hutterite barns, which make up two thirds to three quarters of the production across Western Canada, are not available for the plants to purchase.
Late in July, the buy-in from producers has continued to gain momentum, including support from Hutterite colonies in the Red Deer area and in Southwestern Saskatchewan, whose leaders have let their own contracts expire and are encouraging others to do the same.
Bushell says WHE pulled in 25 new customers after meeting with colony leaders in Southern Alberta, despite taking their story to a room filled with people who are normally suspicious of change.
Every new buy-in from producers who had been contracting to the large plants puts a bit more powder in Bushell’s cannon. He says processors and producers need to work together on turning their industry around, given that so many producers are already gone from British Columbia along with the ongoing loss of hog barns in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
“I think I have to take a little bit of credit about being the poison gas that started the show about four years ago, but today it’s propelled by far more than just me,” he says.
“It’s really taken a life of its own, and it’s a powerful thing to live and work in every day.”
Bushell is a graduate of the Saskatchewan Institute of Technology. He holds a diploma in architectural engineering. Before joining WHE, he was operations manager for an Edmonton-based furniture supplier. •
— By Brenda Kossowan